In an extended discussion of Donald Trump‘s attack on Hillary Clinton, NBC’s Matt Lauer talked about Trump’s language as “demeaning” and “degrading” and “juvenile,” but he didn’t repeat the word that sparked the discussion: “schlong.”
In a rally Monday night, Trump said this of Clinton: “Even a race to Obama, she was gonna beat Obama. I don’t know who would be worse, I don’t know, how could it be worse? But she was going to beat–she was favored to win–and she got schlonged, she lost, I mean she lost.”
CBS News, which called Trump’s language “lewd,” reports “schlong” (or “schlonged”) has never been used in a presidential speech. On CBS This Morning, Major Garrett mentioned a “lewd leap toward Yiddish,” but bleeped the word itself.
Tuesday morning on ABC, Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos called Trump’s speech “colorful,” and Jon Karl, who packaged the rally, referenced a “sexually derogatory term” but editing out the word itself.
Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin also shied away from the word, choosing to describe Trump’s language as “crude.”
And so it seems that Trump, the man who has broken viewership records for cable news, has now seemingly delivered another first: newsroom discussions over the word “schlong,” and how it can be referenced, alluded to, or uttered in the context of a story on presidential politics.