Democrats try a new tone: Less scripted, more cursing, Trumpier insults [View all]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/09/democrats-tone-cursing-casual-trump/

Democrats try a new tone: Less scripted, more cursing, Trumpier insults
Party leaders are swearing more, recording more direct-to-camera videos and trying to project an authenticity many voters have come to associate with Trump.
July 17, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EDT
By Hannah Knowles and Lydia Sidhom

The Democratic National Committee’s social media team kicked off its retreat early this year with a blunt message: People were slamming their work, which sometimes failed to connect with the party’s angry voters.

So, the team shortened its approval process for social media posts, encouraging members not to overthink them. They used the f-word on the party’s main X account. And when erstwhile Trump ally Elon Musk suggested without evidence that President Donald Trump was entangled in the infamous Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, the DNC gleefully piled on: “RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!”

“Every day the Trump administration, Republicans in Congress, they’re doing something cruel and corrupt and absurd, and they deserve mockery,” said Tim Hogan, who leads the DNC’s war room. “The strategy is not to have someone who needs to read a 40-page deck and calibrate before posting, but just go out and recruit people who know how to dunk.”

The DNC’s meaner, more freewheeling social media presence is part of a broader shift underway among Democrats, who want to loosen up, shake their by-the-book image, and strike a harder tone toward Trump and other Republicans. Party leaders are swearing more, using edgier insults, recording more direct-to-camera videos, embracing hours-long podcast appearances and trying to project a raw authenticity that — to Democrats’ frustration — many voters have come to associate with Trump.

The party has struggled to compete with Trump for attention in the first months of his second term, and Democrats disagree about how best to retool and fix their record-low polling numbers. But there is growing consensus that shifting away from a cautious and carefully scripted image is crucial.

“In the wake of Trump, it’s really important for us to understand that authenticity is the coin of the realm, that voters can smell insincerity more acutely than ever before,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who has long written his own social media posts. “They know when you are using talking points or poll-tested language. They expect you to make mistakes.”

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Be mean. Be blunt. Hit hard. Repeat.