Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke has promised to clean up his language on the campaign trail after coming under fire for letting profanities fly.
Over the weekend, a Wisconsin voter criticized the former Texas congressman for his use of the work “fuck,” which he’s done in front of his children and during his concession speech after narrowly losing his Senate race to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “I am so fucking proud of you guys,” O’Rourke said of his supporters at the time in televised remarks that had network producers reaching for the bleep button.
While the comment may have elicited applause and hollers from the crowd in Texas, the voter urged O’Rourke to “clean up your language.” A cowed O’Rourke responded, “Great point. And I don’t intend to use the F-word going forward. Point taken, and very strongly made. … We’re going to keep it clean.”
O’Rourke is hardly the first presidential hopeful to let obscenities fly on the campaign trail, and it’s unlikely he will be the last. The men who have occupied the office he is yearning to hold have spewed more than their fair share of swear words.
Another Texas Democrat, President Lyndon B. Johnson, once told a reporter that economic polices after he left office were “the worst thing that’s happened to this country since pantyhose ruined finger-fucking.” He would refer to his wife Lady Bird Johnson, to whom he was unfaithful, as “the best piece of ass I ever had.”
Transcripts of tapes from President Richard Nixon’s White House conversations were peppered with the phrase “expletive deleted.” He once described the Polish ambassador to the U.S. as “that little asshole.” On another occasion he said that “when I write a letter to an astronaut, I’m not doing it for the goddamn Russians. Fuck them.”
In 2000, then-candidate George W. Bush was caught on a hot mic during a campaign event offering a colorful description of New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, calling him a “major-league asshole.”
Four years later, Vice President Dick Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on the Senate floor to “fuck yourself.”
Former President Barack Obama referred to rapper Kanye West as a “jackass” — albeit a talented one — in an interview with the Atlantic. In private, he swore frequently. In 2010, his vice president, Joe Biden, excitedly told Obama that passage of the Affordable Care Act was caught on a hot mic saying that the legislative victory was “a big fucking deal.”
And President Trump has hardly shied away from swearing. During a rally in Alabama in September 2017, the president urged NFL owners to “get that son of a bitch off the field right now,” referencing players who kneel for the national anthem.
His use of the word “shithole” to describe Haiti and African countries also set off a diplomatic firestorm, and his presidential campaign was nearly derailed when the “Access Hollywood” tape revealed he had boasted about grabbing women “by the pussy.”
Referring to the television personality Nancy O’Dell, he said: “I moved on her actually, she was down in Palm Beach and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try to fuck her, she was married … and I moved on her very heavily.”
Ultimately, such language did not prevent Trump winning the state of Wisconsin against all the odds in 2016. Whether O’Rourke’s vow not to let a four-letter word pass his lips again will impress voters remains to be seen.
