Let's put it in language the Signal leakers will understand: what a bunch of pathetic sleazebags | Emma Brockes

The leaking of top-level military secrets was bad enough, but I'm obsessed with Maga's fratboy lexicon

The Maga-fication of American political discourse, which started, arguably, with Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter in 2015, peaked this week with news of Pete Hegseth referring to European countries in the leaked Signal chat as PATHETIC", and enjoyed a detour last Tuesday when Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and former running mate of Kamala Harris, appeared at a town hall in Wisconsin and called Elon Musk a dipshit". (This is not the first time he has referred to Musk this way. Right before the election last year, Walz told a crowd: Look, Elon's on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dipshit.")

Parking for a moment the perfection of the phrase skipping like a dipshit" to capture Musk's very particular style of movement and speech, the range of what can and can't be said in politics has clearly, radically changed. When you look back on the phrase that caused Hillary Clinton so much trouble in 2016 - basket of deplorables" - it sounds like a quote from an 18th-century novel. Take that, sir! You and your basket of deplorables!" Now we have Trump referring to Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor mistakenly added to the Signal chat, as a sleazebag", and Hegseth, the US defense secretary, telling JD Vance that he fully shares the vice-president's loathing of European free-loading". We are millimetres away from someone shouting asshole" across the floor of the Senate.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist