- The Washington Times - Tuesday, October 1, 2019

White House hopeful Andrew Yang made a colorful analogy involving President Trump during a rowdy campaign rally held for the Democratic candidate late Monday in Los Angeles.

“It’s like a game of rock, paper, scissors. And if Donald Trump’s the scissors, I’m the f—-ing rock,” Mr. Yang said during the crowded event at L.A.’s MacArthur Park.

Mr. Yang used similar language a total of nine times during his 32-minute address to supporters, or an average of about once every 3½ minutes.

“You have to be pretty f—-ing stupid to let a trillion-dollar tech company pay nothing in taxes,” Mr. Yang said about retailer Amazon.

“What does this look like to you? It looks like a f—-ing revolution to me,” Mr. Yang said about his White House campaign.

Mr. Yang, who described himself during the rally as both “barely a f—-ing politician” and “a non-politician who is not full of s—-,” currently ranks among the top 10 candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, according to several recent nationwide polls.

A 44-year-old tech entrepreneur and former lawyer, Mr. Yang is the only Democratic contender in his tier to not previously hold an elected position. He is hardly alone with respect to using off-color language, however.

Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman for Texas, pledged in March to curb his use of profanities after a voter asked him during a campaign event to “clean up” his language. He has since changed course, repeatedly describing a rash of recent mass shootings as “f—-ed up” and subsequently selling campaign T-shirts with that slogan.

More recently, the Democratic Party forwarded a memo to candidates from ABC reminding them not to swear during the most recent primary debate.

“We wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that, as the debate will air on the ABC broadcast network, we are governed by Federal Communications Commission indecency rules,” Rick Klein, the network’s political director, wrote in the memo last month. “Candidates should therefore avoid cursing or expletives in accordance with federal law.”

• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.

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