JD Vance has a potty mouth. And he wants you to know it.

Por Ben Johansen and Megan Messerly — POLITICO – TOP Stories

Speaking before a crowd in North Carolina last month, Vice President JD Vance stumbled: “We need somebody who will fight back against the fart left,” he said, then corrected himself, saying he meant the “far left.”

He could have kept going with his remarks. Instead, he stopped. “You may not have even heard that,” he told the crowd, then repeated the phrase and swore it was an accident. “So to the fake news who will accuse me of bad language, I promise I did not mean to call them the fart left.”

This one-two step — say something off color followed by an apologia, sometimes to any children in the room, sometimes to his wife Usha — has become a semi-regular feature of Vance’s campaign speeches especially over the past six months, during which a POLITICO review of a sampling of his public remarks turned up five instances.

In Ohio earlier this year — a sixth instance — it was “cowardly bullshit,” followed by an apology to the kids in the audience.

In Georgia three months later, he declared some critics “full of shit” before acknowledging that his wife had been trying to clean up his vocabulary for years. In Milwaukee this summer, someone needed their “ass thrown the hell out of Washington” (the blame went to Vance’s “f-bomb-dropping grandmother”).

At the launch of the America.gov website last month, Vance recalled warning its developers not to let it become a “clusterfuck,” then: “Whoops. Sorry. Excuse me. Hopefully no kids in the back.”

Some critics say it appears staged. Others close to Vance say it’s just how the vice president talks.

The White House referred POLITICO to the vice president’s office. Spokespeople for Vance did not respond to a request for comment.

Vance isn’t shy about using salty language — a review shows incidents dating back to at least 2024 — and he’s hardly the only politician to pepper in profanity. President Donald Trump has practically made it a feature of his presidency.

“Knowing and seeing JD behind the scenes, that is just generally how he talks in real life,” said Garrett Ventry, a Republican strategist and Vance ally. “I think clearly over the last few years he has gotten more comfortable and better at giving speeches because he is just being himself.”

Maura Gillespie, a Republican communications strategist who previously worked for former House Speaker John Boehner, who himself had a prolific foul mouth, said she views the tactic as one “politicians are using to try and one, seem more relatable, but is to act as if they are frustrated. It shows passion.”

She doesn’t know Vance well enough to know whether it’s authentic but she said the approach can backfire when the language feels rehearsed rather than spontaneous.

“My concern then becomes in the way that it does feel very scripted for some members that do it, it’s because it comes across as inauthentic, and it actually ends up backfiring,” Gillespie said.

And some conservatives see the repetition — and Vance’s recent tendency to call attention to it — in just that way: staged

“There’s something deeper about American politics where people think you can fake authenticity by cursing,” said one prominent conservative commentator, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the vice president. “The thing about Trump cursing is — Trump normally curses. When he does, it’s because he talks like that.”

Vance, the commentator said, doesn’t typically pepper his private conversations with the same language, making the ritual all the more noticeable.

“He feels the need, like a bad comedian, to put his thumb on it, like ‘Usha wouldn’t want me saying this,’” the commentator said.

Inside the White House, Vance’s profanities are viewed as an asset — part of a broader willingness by the Trump administration to dispense with the carefully calibrated language of traditional politicians.

“Oftentimes, in the past, politicians have either coded their language or used language that’s just not relatable to people,” said a senior White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Sometimes using saltier language conveys a point across more directly than if you were to give 1,000 words on something.”

“This White House, this administration is no bullshit,” the official added. “We’ll say it as we see it, and it runs from the top all the way to the bottom.”

The everyman appeal of bad language isn’t partisan, of course. Politicians in both parties have increasingly turned to verboten words in public appearances, often as a way to convey frustration or emphasize a point.

In 2024, then-Vice President Kamala Harris drew laughs and applause when she encouraged a crowd to “kick that fucking door down,” before adding, “Excuse my language.”

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories