President Trump made waves this week when he used the f-word while updating reporters on efforts to settle Iran’s military conflict with Israel.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f‑‑‑ they’re doing,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a NATO summit on Monday as the Middle East rivals appeared to waffle on their temporary truce after the U.S. bombed Iran’s key nuclear sites over the weekend.
Trump isn’t the first president to use the expletive, and former President Nixon left Americans wondering what words were uttered in the White House with the release of transcripts with the phrase “[EXPLETIVE DELETED]” throughout in 1974.
The Hill reported in April that Democrats have been embracing the f-word more as they campaigned against Trump’s policies, prompting a National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokesperson to accuse Democrats of being “obsessed with saying ‘f‑‑‑ing’ and ‘a‑‑’ as the strategy to win back the voters that rejected them in 2024.”
The Hill and GovPredict found in 2019 that the use of curse words from lawmakers on the social media site then-called Twitter dramatically increased in the first year of Trump’s first term.
Here are five of the most explosive f-bombs in recent politics:
Trump drops a bunker-buster f-bomb
Trump’s use of the f-word to describe Iran and Israel’s attitudes toward their long-standing conflict and latest military strikes against each other was the first time that a president used the word intentionally on live television, though Trump said the word in a hot mic moment before addressing the nation about the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Jon Krosnick, a social psychologist at Stanford University who studies political communication and behaviors, told The Hill that Trump’s use in the context of the Middle East conflict was “very interesting and very revealing.”
“It was one sentence, but it was an important sentence,” Krosnick said. “It was not carefully scripted — it was just something that came out.”
“This communicated that he’s basically exasperated with the situation, but also that he is feeling confident that he can communicate in that way,” he added.
Bidens BFD
Former President Biden, while he was vice president, was caught on a hot mic describing the Affordable Care Act as a “big f—ing deal” during then-President Obama’s signing ceremony for the legislation that’s commonly known as Obamacare.
The two joked about the f-word slip a decade later when then-President Biden invited Obama to the White House for an executive order signing event in 2022.
“Now, I’m gonna sign an executive order, and, Barack, let me remind you: It’s a hot mic,” Biden said, eliciting laughs and applause from the crowd.
Obama, when it was his turn to speak, joked that he was quoting a “famous American” in describing the Biden’s order as a “pretty big deal.”
Cheney’s f-bomb on the Senate floor
During a photo-op on the Senate floor in 2004, then-Vice President Dick Cheney (R) reportedly told Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to “go f— himself.”
The New York Times reported at the time that Leahy said he was “kind of shocked to hear that kind of language on the floor.”
Trump’s big, beautiful f-word message to Republicans
Trump made a rare trek to Capitol Hill to pressure Republicans to pass his agenda-setting “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in March, but word quickly spread that he warned members not to “f‑‑‑ with Medicaid.”
Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) said after the president’s closed-door meeting with House Republicans that the members took his use of profanity lightheartedly.
Trump described the gathering as “a meeting of love.”
“That was love in that room. There was no shouting,” the president said.
JFK’s F-up
Then-President Kennedy reportedly told a general in 1963 that the Air Force spending thousands on first lady Jackie Kennedy’s maternity suite at Otis Air Force Base was “a f— up.”
LBJ’s don’t f— with the U.S.A. message to Greece
Then-President Lyndon Johnson (D) reportedly used the f-word in a warning to then-Greek ambassador to the U.S. Alexander Matsas in 1964.
“Fuck your parliament and your constitution,” Johnson reportedly told Matas, as quoted in a 1977 biography.