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By now, pretty much every American who is a consumer of news has seen the clip of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey telling ICE agents that they’re not welcome in his city. USA Today described it as the “F-bomb heard across the nation” in an article that was broadly complimentary of the mayor.
Now comes the news that President Donald Trump hurled his own F-bomb, accompanied by an obscene gesture, at a factory worker who called him a “pedophile protector” while the president was touring a Ford plant in Michigan on Tuesday.
The White House communications director said in a statement that Trump had given an “appropriate and unambiguous response” to the heckler.
Frey also defended his remark, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “I’m so sorry if I offended their Disney princess ears, but here’s the thing. If we’re talking about what’s inflammatory, on the one hand, you got someone who dropped an F-bomb, and on the other hand, you got someone who killed somebody else. F-bomb, killing somebody. I think the more inflammatory action is killing somebody.”
Frey’s response, and that of the White House, gaslights the millions of Americans who don’t want their leaders using profanities as they represent us. It’s not OK. Don’t tell us it is.
Although the number of people who object to locker-room language in public is shrinking, in part because of the acceptance of profanity among the youngest Americans, tens of millions of us still believe it crosses a line. Pew reported last year that 65% of Americans believe it’s wrong to curse in public.
Many people in politics, from Democrat Gavin Newsom to Republican Nancy Mace, seem to have not gotten that memo.
Calling the ubiquitousness of profanity “both a symptom and a driver of a broader cultural coarsening,” Jeff Jacoby wrote for The Boston Globe last month, “The coarsest language is no longer a breach of decorum. Increasingly, it is a credential.”
Some of the gutter language polluting the culture seems premeditated, Barton Swaim wrote in The Wall Street Journal last month.
“Today’s pols aren’t bawling swear words because they can’t contain their outrage. They’ve decided, like preteen boys trying to sound tough, that the odd public expletive enhances their authenticity and gives them an air of pugnacity apropos to the moment.”
But there are also the outbursts, like Trump’s, which signal that, when it comes to profanity, it’s not his first rodeo, but a pattern of speaking to other people that has become ingrained.
This seems to be the case with Megyn Kelly, who has made the phrase “f— you” a staple of her public discourse, despite her largely conservative audience. She’s said it to CBS, to Taylor Swift, and to former President Joe Biden, among others. She recently told “hateful people whom I used to call friends” that “I don’t have any pearls of wisdom other than go f— yourselves.”
This was shocking to hear even from Kelly, a mother of three who has celebrated the freedom to curse on satellite radio. And it shows one of the pitfalls of profanity: When you use it frequently, you lose the awareness of how it lands on people who don’t. When you’re in the business of growing and maintaining an audience, or a voting base, that seems like useful knowledge to have.
Who can lead us out of the cultural locker room we find ourselves in? The people of the Disney princess ears await your leadership.
And it’s worth remembering, as the expletives rain down across the country, inuring our children to their effects, that every snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.
Can the circus survive without animals?
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey launched its “Greatest Show on Earth” tour this week — sans the elephants, lions and tigers of the circus I saw as a child.
The news release describing the 2026 show makes it sound like “Up With People” with a trapeze and unicycles: “a nonstop celebration of high-energy music, pop culture, vibrant color, and jaw-dropping circus acts.” It’s yet another iteration of the circus that has struggled to find its footing after retiring its elephants in 2016 and then taking a six-year hiatus.
Moreover, “In an unprecedented moment for Ringling’s 150-year legacy, the show will feature its first-ever music artist collaboration with Maddox Batson, a teen pop-country star. His custom Ringling mashup blends his modern country sound with the adrenaline of live circus performance, creating a dance-worthy moment.”
This is not the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus that most people know.
Give them credit for trying to save the brand without animal cruelty, which is something that has been largely overlooked in P.T. Barnum’s legacy. (“The Greatest Showman” was a fun movie, but left out the part where Barnum had elephants and whales captured and brought to New York City for live displays.) But the replacement of live animals with Bailey the Robo-Pup might be a hard sell.
Recommended reading
Much of the discussion about the fertility crisis has to do with government policies that might help. Jay Evensen points out that there are other things that may be even more important:
“Speaking recently at BYU, Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, an economist from the Catholic University of America, said, ‘Marriage and childbearing belong to the domain of the spirit, the rational part of the rational animal.’ According to an account of her talk by BYU’s Daily Universe, Pakaluk didn’t call for any new programs. She said the answer lies in faith.”
Government incentives alone won’t reverse the falling birth rate
The past week marked the 250th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” Eleesha Tucker considers the importance of that pamphlet and why it resonated in the colonies:
“I explain to my university students the impact of ‘Common Sense’ with this analogy: Imagine a couple with serious marital problems turning to a counselor for help. Instead of guiding them toward reconciliation, the therapist lays out a clear, direct argument for separation. That is what Thomas Paine did. He did not help Americans repair their relationship with Britain; he convinced them to walk away from it.”
From reconciliation to revolution — ‘Common Sense’ and the making of American independence
Samuel J. Abrams took his son to see the animated film “David” and emerged with thoughts about how today’s young people urgently need shared stories that convey moral guidance:
“Children are surrounded by content but rarely invited into narratives that ask enduring questions about responsibility, courage and restraint. Too often, moral formation is outsourced to screens or flattened into slogans. Adults hesitate to speak with confidence about tradition, worried about imposing, moralizing or saying the wrong thing.”
What a King David movie gave my son and me
End notes
On the evening the new federal dietary guidelines were released, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brooke Rollins went on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News to talk about them with Laura Ingraham.
What happened was pretty remarkable: Rollins acknowledged the existence of “food deserts,” places where it can be difficult to find fresh and wholesome food. It was a term that some conservatives, including Ingraham, mocked when Michelle Obama talked about them during the Obama administration. “We take it all back, she‘s right,” Ingraham said.
Ingraham: Michelle Obama used to call them food deserts. I used to poke fun at her. Was she right?
Rollins: Part of that is correct.
Ingraham: We take it all back. She is right pic.twitter.com/yvswE5T2uk
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 8, 2026
It was a rare show of the potential for national unity — at least when it comes to nutrition.
And it’s probably just coincidence, and certainly not shrewd marketing aimed at MAHA, but I discovered this week that Chipotle is now touting a new “high-protein menu.”
If you missed it, here’s some of the reaction to the new high-protein federal guidelines. They’re making the meat industry happy.
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