President Donald Trump swore live on air during a
high-stakes White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy,
sparking wide reaction.
Trump used the obscenity when he was answering questions from reporters during Friday's meeting over the dispute with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“He has offered everything,”
Trump said, referring to Maduro.
“You know why? Because he doesn't want to f*** around with the United States.”
Trump quickly ended the press conference after using the profanity.
Viewers received an apology from the broadcasters for the president's remarks.
Trump used the same rhetoric in June when a ceasefire agreement he had previously announced between Israel and Iran seemed to fall through.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing,”
a frustrated Trump told reporters at the White House as he departed for a NATO summit in the Netherlands.
Trump’s language became more expletive in his third presidential campaign, according to analysis by The New York Times. In 2024, Trump cursed in public more than 1,700 times, according to the newspaper.
In 2016, Trump told his supporters,
“We’re gonna have businesses that used to be in New Hampshire that are now in Mexico. Come back to New Hampshire, and you can tell them to go f*** themselves.”
Following the Trump administration's escalation of the military campaign against the leader's dictatorship this week, Maduro was asked what more he "could do" to defuse tensions with the United States, which sparked his outburst on Friday.
Because Venezuela "emptied their prisons into the United States of America" and inundated the nation with drugs, Trump asserted on Wednesday that he "authorized" CIA activities on Venezuelan soil.
In a classified warning to members of Congress last month, the administration said that the United States is officially involved in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels that the president has designated as “unlawful combatants."
The notification seems to legitimize a series of missile strikes against vessels off the coast of Venezuela by citing extraordinary wartime powers.
What reactions came from Ukrainian officials after the meeting?
Following a meeting at the White House between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, officials from Ukraine voiced cautious optimism but indicated they remain in dire need of support.
Zelenskyy and his delegation told Trump that far-reaching consequences would likely occur if Ukraine could utilize advanced American-made weapons such as Tomahawk cruise missiles and air defense systems that would allow Ukraine to fight deep inside Russian territory.
Also discussed was expanding initial cooperation with US defense companies including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, to improve Ukraine's capability to produce its own arms domestically, and to enhance supplies to keep up with its defense needs.