Somewhere between “I respectfully disagree with my colleague” and screaming into the void, American politics found the f-bomb. And nobody in Congress has found it more often than Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego.
According to an analysis tracked by The New York Times, Gallego has dropped the f-bomb 77 times on X (formerly Twitter) since 2020. That’s not a typo. Seventy-seven. That makes him the undisputed champion of congressional profanity — and it’s apparently not even close.
But Gallego isn’t the only one letting it fly. A growing number of lawmakers — mostly Democrats, but not exclusively — have decided that polished talking points are out and raw, four-letter authenticity is in. Whether that’s smart politics or a slow-motion disaster depends entirely on who you ask.
Who Is Ruben Gallego, Anyway?
If you don’t follow Arizona politics closely, you might not know much about Gallego beyond his colorful social media presence. But his background is the kind of story that political consultants would kill to fabricate — except it’s real.
Gallego grew up poor in Chicago, raised by a single Colombian immigrant mother on a secretary’s salary. He worked at a pizza joint, on construction crews, and at a meatpacking plant. Then he got into Harvard. After graduating, he enlisted in the Marines and deployed to Iraq with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines — a unit initially nicknamed “Lucky Lima” that went on to suffer some of the highest American casualties of the entire Iraq War. Twenty-two Marines and a Navy Corpsman in his company were killed in just eight months.
He wrote about it in a 2021 book called They Called Us Lucky. He’s been open about dealing with PTSD from his time in combat. And when the Capitol was stormed on January 6, 2021, Gallego’s Marine training kicked in — he moved through the House chamber helping guide legislators and staffers to safety.
So when this guy swears on the internet, it comes from a specific place. That doesn’t make it automatically fine. But it does make the “he’s just trying to be edgy” criticism ring a little hollow.
The F-Bomb That Made Headlines
Gallego’s most famous profane moment came after the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, when he directed a blistering post at Senator Ted Cruz. The New York Times later wrote that “Gallego has built a reputation as a blunt-spoken liberal who is politically in tune with young progressives and lacerates his opponents with profane social media posts.”
That reputation didn’t hurt him at the ballot box. In his 2024 Senate race against MAGA Republican Kari Lake, Gallego won by over 2 points — in a state where Vice President Kamala Harris lost by nearly 6 points. Whatever he’s doing on social media, Arizona voters didn’t seem to mind.
His 77 f-bombs on X only count what researchers were able to track on that single platform. The real number across interviews, press events, and other social media is almost certainly higher.
He’s Not the Only One Swearing
Gallego may be the king, but he’s got company. Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “a f*cking liar” in a written statement — not a slip of the tongue at a bar, a written, official statement from a sitting U.S. Senator. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas has embraced her self-described “potty mouth” as part of her political brand. House Budget ranking member Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania sent a press email with the subject line “Boyle Calls Bullshit on Republican Budget Lies.”
That’s not some rogue staffer hitting send too fast. That’s a congressman’s official communications team deciding that “bullshit” belongs in a press release. A few years ago, that would’ve been career-ending. Now it barely makes the news cycle for half a day.
Rep. Robert Garcia summed up the mood pretty well: “I’m a pretty nice guy, but I swear, and I say f–k a lot. Like most people, I’m pi–ed right now, and I’m angry.”
The Numbers Show a Massive Spike
This isn’t just vibes. The data backs it up. Government relations software company GovPredict tracked congressional profanity over several years and found that in 2014, there were just 83 instances of lawmakers using profane words on social media and in public statements. By 2017 — the year Trump took office — that exploded to 1,571 instances. By 2018, it was 2,409.
The biggest single driver? Trump’s “sh*thole countries” comment about Haiti and African nations during a closed-door meeting with lawmakers. Before that comment, Congress members had used the word “sh*t” or its variations just seven times on the record. Afterward? 480 times. That’s not a gradual cultural shift. That’s a dam breaking.
At the time of that earlier analysis, Senator Bernie Sanders led Congress with 41 uses of profanity. Gallego has since blown past that number on a single platform.
Campaign Trails Are Getting Saltier Too
It’s not just sitting members of Congress. Candidates are running on profanity now. In New York, former journalist Mike Sacks launched a Democratic challenge pledging to “unf— our country.” Progressive influencer Kat Abughazaleh challenged a sitting Democrat in Illinois, urging the party to “drop the excuses and grow a f—ing spine.” Her campaign manager told reporters that “real people are f—ing fed up with the status quo.”
Republicans noticed. A spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee fired back that Democrats “seem obsessed with saying f—ing and a– as the strategy to win back voters that rejected them in 2024.”
That’s a fair criticism — or at least a funny one. Is swearing a political strategy or just frustration boiling over? Probably both. Democratic strategist Fred Hicks called the 2024 election “a wake-up call that we have to simplify our language.” Whether “simplify” was supposed to mean “add more f-words” is up for interpretation.
The Gallego Brand: Tacos, Trucks, and Truculent Tweets
What makes Gallego interesting is that the swearing isn’t the whole act. It’s part of a larger approach to politics that’s deliberately working-class, deliberately un-polished, and deliberately aimed at voters who tune out traditional Democratic messaging.
In a 2025 interview with The New York Times Magazine, Gallego told fellow Democrats: “Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck. There’s nothing wrong with that.” He talked about visiting construction sites before dawn to hand out tacos. He held boxing watch parties, a rodeo, and a low-rider car show during his campaign.
He also co-sponsored the Laken Riley Act and criticized the Biden administration’s handling of asylum claims — moves that put him at odds with progressive orthodoxy. He’s a founding member of the centrist Majority Democrats group alongside Senators Elissa Slotkin and Michael Bennet.
In other words, the guy who swears the most in Congress is also one of the Democrats most willing to break with his own party. Make of that what you will.
Capitol Hill Staff Aren’t Thrilled About It
While elected officials are cussing up a storm, the people who actually write their legislation are less enthusiastic. A survey of House and Senate aides found that 62 percent believe profanity by members of Congress is “seldom or never” acceptable in a professional or public setting.
The breakdown by party was predictable but still interesting: 68 percent of Republican aides said profanity is seldom or never acceptable, compared to 55 percent of Democratic aides. The gender split was even sharper — 70 percent of women staffers rejected their bosses swearing publicly, versus 52 percent of male staffers.
There are roughly 12,000 congressional aides doing the actual grunt work of writing and negotiating federal law. They’re watching their bosses type f-bombs for engagement while they’re pulling all-nighters on policy memos nobody reads. You can see why the enthusiasm gap exists.
A Long History of Presidents Who Couldn’t Keep It Clean
Congressional profanity is trending, but presidents have been cursing behind closed doors for as long as there’s been a White House. Lyndon B. Johnson was legendarily profane — his beloved “bulls—” was bowdlerized in print to simply “bull.” But the American public didn’t fully grasp how R-rated a president could be until the Watergate hearings, when Nixon’s secret White House tapes were released and the phrase “[expletive deleted]” became part of everyday American conversation.
Vice President Dick Cheney was caught dropping the f-word on the Senate floor in 2004. Biden was caught on a hot mic using it at the ACA signing. When Kamala Harris was running for president, British media speculated she’d be “the sweariest president in U.S. history.” At a political rally in 2025, Trump used profanity at least four times. And according to researcher Joseph Phillips at Cardiff University, presidents and their seconds-in-command have used profanity publicly at least 692 times — but 87 percent of those curse words happened in just the last 10 years.
Does Swearing Actually Work in Politics?
This is the million-dollar question, and the answer is messy. Ben Bergen, a cognitive science professor at UC San Diego and author of What the F, says people who swear are judged as “more out of control, possibly less intelligent, possibly less well educated” — but also “more truthful, more genuine, more accessible, funnier, more passionate.” That’s a wild trade-off.
A Pew Research Center survey found that 42 percent of respondents see Trump as honest, and researchers link his high-intensity language to that perception of sincerity. But Pew also found that 66 percent of U.S. adults say it’s rarely or never acceptable to visibly display swear words, and 65 percent say cursing in public is rude.
So most Americans don’t love public profanity — but they reward politicians who seem real. That contradiction is basically the whole story of modern American politics in a sentence.
Linguist Clementson warns that “the rule of thumb with obscene language is it’s going to backfire.” Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim was harsher, writing that politicians swear not because they can’t contain outrage, but because “like preteen boys trying to sound tough,” they believe “the odd public expletive enhances their authenticity.”
Patrick Riccards, a crisis communications expert who’s worked on Capitol Hill since the 1990s, put it simply: when he was a communications director, a lawmaker cursing in public would’ve been “a major scandal and huge stressor.” Now it’s Tuesday.
Whether Gallego’s 77 f-bombs make him more relatable or less serious probably depends on whether you already agree with him. But one thing’s for sure — nobody’s going to confuse him with a stuffed suit reading focus-grouped talking points. And in 2025, that might be the whole point.
