Not long after former President Donald J. Trump held press conference Monday on his political fraud case, a Biden campaign social media account shared a clip accusing him of being open to taking a foreign government’s money to pay for a $175 million bond.
As is often the norm during political campaigns, Mr. Trump’s team accused their opponents of stripping the details and context of their candidate’s remarks.
What was less characteristic was the language they used.
“Wrong you dumbass,” a Trump campaign social media account, Trump War Room, shot back at X. “He said he would pay in cash, securities or bonds.”
The Trump War Room account, part of his campaign’s rapid response efforts on social media, frequently posts excerpts of Mr. Trump’s speeches or comments from campaign surrogates. He also frequently shares criticism of President Biden and the media. And during the primaries, he attacked Mr. Trump’s Republican opponents in harsh terms.
The smear campaign is a political tradition as old as politics itself. But the use of the verbiage by one official campaign spokesman to address another reflects a vulgarization of the political discourse that accompanied Mr. Trump’s rise and that has characterized the 2024 presidential campaign.
At recent rallies, Mr. Trump has used similar profanity to criticize Mr. Biden and some Democrats. Earlier this month in Georgia, Mr Trump told supporters that everything Mr Biden touched turned into bull droppings, using a verbiage he acknowledged some might consider beyond the pale.
“I tried to come up with a different word, but there are some words that can’t be repeated,” Mr Trump said, to the delight of the crowd. During the speech, Mr. Trump repeated that word, or used a variation of it, at least four times.
Mr. Trump entertains a combative style of politics, one that often relies on incendiary language. His campaign aides have mirrored his rhetoric, issuing statements that take Mr. Trump’s opponents by surprise or use derisive epithets to refer to them.
As Mr. Biden runs for re-election, his campaign has taken an aggressive slant, particularly on social media, where campaign accounts have attacked Mr. Trump for his comments and behavior. On Monday, the Biden campaign responded to the Trump campaign’s diatribes with one mocking meme.
On the trail, both candidates also traded jabs at each other, often criticizing their suitability for the presidency.
But while Mr. Biden has occasionally grabbed headlines for some salty language, Mr. Trump has used public profanity with much greater frequency since he first launched his campaign in 2015.
Mr. Trump, who often prides himself on bucking the rules and making the political establishment clutch its pearls, continued to do so as he lashed out at political opponents and dismissed the four criminal cases he faces.
During rallies, Mr. Trump often refers to the 91 felony charges against him as “bullshit.” His multitudes then begin to chant the word in unison.
Monday’s social media exchange came after a hearing in Mr. Trump’s case in Manhattan on charges related to hush money paid to a porn star. On the same day, an appeals court reduced a bond Mr. Trump must post as he appeals a nearly half-billion-dollar verdict in the political fraud case.
Mr Trump had said he would secure the bond with “cash or bond or security or whatever is necessary” before being asked at a press conference whether he would accept money from a foreign government to pay for the bond.
Mr Trump, who has not relinquished control of his global business or divested himself of foreign businesses while president, has repeatedly accused Mr Biden of taking millions of dollars from foreign countries, although no evidence has emerged to support the allegation.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said he did not foresee getting foreign money to pay for the bond, but added that he did not think anything would stand in the way.
“No, I’m not doing that,” Mr. Trump said. “I think you would be allowed, possibly. I do not know. I mean, if you go to borrow from a big bank, a lot of the banks are outside — as you know, the biggest banks, frankly, are outside of our country. This is how you could do it. But I don’t need to borrow money.”
