It’s a word Donald Trump uses a lot, and — to judge by the comments in social media about Donald Trump — it’s one that gets used to describe him too. The word in question? Disgusting. It’s not a pretty word, nor is it meant to be. And it’s just the kind of diction that wins Trump accolades from supporters for his “tell-it-like-it-is” style, while also finding him accused of lowering the level of the national dialogue. Disgusting is a judgment, not a fact — and it makes an argument coarse and below our standards, goes that way of thinking. George W. Bush was more likely to call things fabulous than disgusting. Barack Obama has too genteel a style to use disgusting to describe something or someone.
But now that Donald Trump and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are in a Twitter insult battle — talk about the lowering standards of politics — it’s worth mentioning that Warren doesn’t shy away from Trump-style diction. Here’s a quote from Warren in January of this year which uses “disgusting.” It sounds as if it could have easily come out of Trump’s mouth: “I’m not sure what’s more disgusting: That Jeb Bush is pinning his Presidential hopes on his brother’s bailout money, or that bailed-out CEOs are trying to buy elections.”
