Donald Trump is a vulgarian. We know this — it has long been a defining feature of his public and private lives. But a new report from the Washington Post quantifies what many people have sensed: Trump’s use of profanity, insults and combative language has grown much worse since his return to power in January 2025.
In Trump’s first term, about 40% of his speeches contained at least one use of vulgarity. During just the first 16 months of his second term, that figure stands at 93%. The president’s profane or insulting posts on social media have also tripled as compared to his first term. The barrages are coming much later; most of his posts are made between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., indicating the president, who has always been nocturnal, is even more so as he approaches his 80th birthday in June. His Truth Social posts are more self-referential and egomaniacal: in 2026, half of his posts have used first-person pronouns — sometimes more than 12 times in a single post. That is up from 30% from 2018.
But this goes beyond numbers. Trump’s vulgar behavior and cruelty are not incidental. They are structural, and a defining feature of his policies, his view of democracy and society, and his relationship to the American people and the world.
Empowered by the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, the president has been elevated as America’s first de facto king and aspiring dictator. His apparent desire to end real democracy and the rule of law — replacing it with competitive authoritarianism through the Big Lie, voter nullification, voter suppression, and the threat of the Insurrection Act and martial law — are accelerating features of his political project.
Trump launched a war of choice against Iran and has repeatedly threatened to destroy its civilization — actions that are crimes against humanity. His administration is transparently corrupt and ethically compromised, with his personal and family wealth estimated to have grown by billions of dollars.
The president is a crude racist who has shared an artificial intelligence-generated video of the Obamas as apes. He routinely insults the intelligence of Black people — and Black women specifically — as “low IQ.” He says that non-white immigrants are “poison” in “the blood” of the nation and parasites. He has repeatedly shown himself to be a sexist and a misogynist.
These are not character flaws or just bad behavior. Collectively, they are attacks on basic principles and norms of democracy, civility, decency, equality, fairness, and dignity that American civic life nominally rests on.
Fascism and other forms of authoritarianism are, at their core, vulgar political systems and forms of crude power that rob entire populations and societies of dignity and agency.
Fascism and other forms of authoritarianism are, at their core, vulgar political systems and forms of crude power that rob entire populations and societies of dignity and agency. It is not a coincidence that Trump’s language and behavior has coarsened in direct proportion to the acceleration of his authoritarian project.
As he has aged, has increasingly appeared to lack filters or self-control. Whether this is intentional behavior born of the arrogance of power or a symptom of a deteriorating mental state is somewhat beside the point. His will to power has not been stopped by members of the Republican Party, America’s political institutions or the responsible elites. The walls have not closed in on Trump. This time around, the so-called adults in the room from his first administration are no longer present; they have been replaced by MAGA sycophants and enablers.
Speaking to the Post, historian Julian Zelizer called Trump historically unique in his use of profanity and how it “meshes with a very aggressive presidency” and a high-dominant leadership style. A curse word, Zelizer noted, is more than just that; the president’s profanity is a signal, a threat, directed at anyone who opposes him, of just how far he is willing to go.
Public opinion polls and focus groups have repeatedly shown that Trump’s MAGA followers admire that he “tells it like it is” — that he ignores “political correctness,” and talks like them. In an example of an unhealthy leader-follower dynamic and mass disinhibition, the president’s diehard MAGA followers yearn to have such power and ability to act without consequence.
In a statement to the Post, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales confirmed this: “President Trump doesn’t care about being politically correct, he cares about Making America Great Again. The American people love how authentic, transparent, and effective the President is, which is why he won in a massive landslide victory on November 5, 2024.”
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Trump’s election win was no landslide. Aside from that, there is another possible explanation for his increased use of profanity and aggressive behavior.
Psychologist John Gartner, a contributor to the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” believes that the president’s worsening behavior may be an indication that his mind is growing even more disturbed and pathological.
“First of all, he’s up at all hours of the night, posting all of these lies and crazy stuff,” Gartner told the Daily Beast. “The pace of It — that someone would be up all night tweeting — is a clinical indicator of some kind of either mania or sundowning.”
Gartner’s deeper concern is what the president’s behavior signals about his real intentions. When Trump recently posted an AI-generated image of himself pushing a red button with mushroom clouds in the background, the psychologist did not treat this as humorous.
“He never jokes,” Gartner said. “And he doesn’t bluff, either. What he does is groom us. He prepares us for things that would otherwise be unthinkable.”
[Trump] decided to give the children a crude lesson about the need for national strength and vitality, Iran, the possibility of imminent nuclear apocalypse, and how Iranian protesters — including women — were shot in the head by snipers.
Presidents are role models and teachers for a nation. Earlier this month, Trump invited a group of children to the Oval Office to celebrate the return of the Presidential Fitness Test. Instead of an age-appropriate conversation about the importance of exercise and health, he decided to give the children a crude lesson about the need for national strength and vitality, Iran, the possibility of imminent nuclear apocalypse, and how Iranian protesters — including women — were shot in the head by snipers.
Trump even went so far as to ask the children to think about all the death a nuclear war would cause, and if they would even be alive right now if the United States had not attacked Iran. “You might be too young for this,” Trump told them. But that didn’t stop him from warning them that “[y]ou can’t let a bunch of lunatics have a nuclear weapon or the world will be in a lot of trouble.”
At one point in this lesson, Trump pressed his finger to his forehead to demonstrate how Iranian protesters were shot between the eyes. He also warned the children about transgender women in sports, calling them predatory.
Several children looked visibly upset. They should have been. Trump was actually teaching them about violence, strength and nationalism, and grooming them to fear the dangerous Other –– the organizing values of fascism.
Since the president’s return to power, I keep coming back to “Slouching Towards Gomorrah,” the 1996 book by federal judge — and failed Supreme Court nominee — Robert Bork. The book was a defining work for the right-wing culture wars, beating the drum for a moral panic about how liberals’ supposed wickedness, immorality and crudeness were destroying the traditional values that American civilization and Western society depended on.
Three decades later, it is a dark and rich irony to see the immorality and cultural degradation that Bork railed against made manifest in the person of Trump — and in his red hat-wearing followers. The irony is dark, but as historian Rick Perlstein has sharply argued, it is really not that surprising.
“What I got wrong about the American right was the idea that it succeeded in the 1960s by purging its crazier, more reactionary, more paranoid elements and becoming respectable,” he told the late journalist Bill Moyers in a 2017 interview. Historians are beginning to rethink that formulation, which is really the conservative’s own self-representation. It’s a very self-congratulatory representation. What if the crazy paranoid fringe was in fact the vanguard?”
Donald Trump did not conquer or otherwise take over the Republican Party and “conservative” movement, nor has he corrupted their innocence. He just gave them permission to be their true selves.
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