Did Donald Trump just welcome the F-word into mainstream media? | David Penberthy

I’ve spent plenty of time having a crack at the US President but this week I found myself laughing and nodding in agreement, writes David Penberthy.

Whatever you think of Donald Trump, there was an undeniable clarity to his extraordinarily blunt comments this week about the prospects for peace in the Middle East.

I have written plenty of pieces having a crack at Trump, not least of which for declaring a stupid trade war against his supposed friends, but when he fired up the other day about the refusal of Israel and Iran to observe even a 12-hour ceasefire, there was nothing confected about his bang-on remarks.

I actually found myself cheering him on and laughing in a combination of disbelief and agreement.

For the few who missed it, this was Trump’s pithy assessment of the prospects of peace between Israel and Iran:

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f**k they’re doing,” the President said.

Hard to argue with that.

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before boarding Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on June 24, 2025, to attend the NATO's Heads of State and Government summit in The Hague. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

It was such an impeccably crafted and earthy sentence.

It reminded me of my late grandma, a repository of politically incorrect observations, who would frequently shake her head during discussions around pretty much any overseas conflict be it in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, or the former Yugoslavia, and say things like: “They’re all bloody mad, they’d rather have a fight than a feed.”

It might sound historically uncurious, possibly even racist, but in terms of overlapping with public sentiment, I can’t think of a clearer expression than the words that came from the President’s mouth at the end of his exasperated press conference.

And then there’s the F word.

Trump’s press conference was a major moment in the history of both linguistics and manners.

It begs this question: As the leader of the Free World, has the President just issued global permission for the F-word to come out of the shadows and enter mainstream parlance?

Will we be using it on radio soon? Will it make its way into press conferences as part of the daily tete-a-tete between journalists and ministers?

The next time Chris Bowen comes on our show do we have permission to say something like: “With respect Minister, when was the last time you actually paid a f**king power bill?”

Will Sarah Ferguson slip it into her gently domineering attempts to keep Albo on track when he next tries to duck and weave on 7.30?

“Prime Minister, Prime Minister, Prime Minister, for f**k’s sake, Prime Minister, will you return to the substance of the question?”

Maybe I’m just a foul-mouthed bogan but, in my opinion, the above sentences are rendered vastly better by the inclusion of the word.

There should be a distinction between artless swearing, where cuss words are used like punctuation by loudmouthed morons on public transport and at the footy because they have few other words at their disposal, and the apt, declaratory, emphatic swearing demonstrated so masterfully by Trump.

Also, to offer a generalised defence of the F-word, there is one unpleasant quality it manages to avoid.

It is never cruel.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been under pressure over Trump’s demands for allies to increase defence spending. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

When the kids were growing up we had a swear jar at home. The words were calibrated by their severity with fines priced accordingly.

There were two massively offensive words we did not even include on it, because we did not want the kids to know that they exist.

One of them starts with n, a word which under no circumstances should ever pass anyone’s lips: the other starts with c, which hopefully you can keep a lid on too, save for genuine top-shelf moments or in a profane comic context.

The entry level swear words such as “bloody” attracted a 50c fine, “s**t” a $1 fine, the F-word a $5 fine, with the highest fine standing at $10 for a derogatory word starting with “r” which is hugely hurtful to people living with disabilities, yet used so commonly still today, despite being vastly worse than the F-word for its capacity to cause distress.

As a parent, I am much less troubled by the prospect of my children growing up to say “f” than calling someone an “r”.

There will be people reading this who could not disagree more, and think that Trump’s quote was a sign of the continuing and hastening collapse in standards of decorum.

They will see it as symptomatic of a world where politeness and civility is all but gone, where profanity-laden TV shows that once only screened after 8.30pm with an AO warning are now on rotation 24 hours a day.

Where songs that once had the lyrics bleeped out on the radio are now played in all their foul-mouthed glory by commercial FM stations while you’re dropping the kids off at school.

Forgive me for not giving much of a you know what.

This word predates Shakespeare, was used by Chaucer, and in the right hands adds genuine colour and flair to human expression.

I will end with a joke. It’s my favourite old-guy joke, an exquisite skewering of millennial sensibilities by a grumpy old man who still inhabits a politically incorrect world.

It’s also a joke that answers the question as to the linguistic necessity of that forbidden word starting with the letter F.

A man in his late 50s has been laid off from his job and signs on with a labour hire firm to seek new employment.

A 20-something woman from the Department of People and Culture sits him down and asks him to complete a form outlining his skills and what he regards as his strengths and weaknesses.

The young woman is reading through the form when something catches her eye.

“In here where it asks you to list your weaknesses, you seem to have listed honesty as a weakness?” she asks.

“That’s right,” he replies.

“I don’t think honesty is a weakness,” she says.

The man replies: “I don’t give a f**k what you think.”

Originally published as Did Donald Trump just welcome the F-word into mainstream media? | David Penberthy