Swalwell tells Rubio to 'grow a pair' after Trump-Zelensky squabble
Source: The Hill
02/28/25 7:56 PM ET
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) told Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “grow a pair” after the former senator defended President Trump after his heated meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington.
After Friday’s public spat between Zelensky, Trump and Vice President Vance, Rubio thanked the commander-in-chief for “standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before. Thank you for putting America First. America is with you!”
Swalwell, a frequent Trump critic, called out Rubio over his response to the huddle that quickly went off the rails. “Bro, did you write this? We all saw you,” Swalwell wrote in a Friday post on the social platform X. “You tried to shrink in your chair. You looked at Trump like he was some crazy ass pops who was embarrassing you on your first date. Don’t bulls— us. Grow a pair.”
The secretary of state sat relatively expressionless next to Vance during the Friday Oval Office as the meeting spiraled in a contentious back-and-forth.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5170432-swalwell-rubio-trump-zelensky/
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Swalwell would have wanted his message to get noticed. Retweeted. Have sites like The Hill write about it. "Grow a pair" supported that goal. I am fairly confident that, like it or not, "grow a spine, and quit imitating a bowl of jello" would not have been as effective.
But also, while it obviously has a male-based origin, I don't think that makes the reference inherently always inappropriate... I think it has a usage today that goes beyond gender. If a woman does something particularly bold and assertive, and someone refers to it as a ballsy move, I wonder what percentage of women would actually find that offensive.
But okay, let's allow for the fact that some women do indeed find any usage of this sort offensive, and for that matter, that some people are likely to find "grow a pair" to be distastefully crude regardless of their gender. But if we want our anti-Trump representatives to get their messages out, maybe it's worth allowing some more linguistic leeway toward that goal? It's hard to imagine Al Gore or John Kerry saying "grow a pair," but a lot of the country relates better to people who talk the way "regular people" do. They wanted to have a beer with George W Bush, not some "elite" who always used just the right words, always politically correct.
(Of course there's a line. Using an ethnic slur against Rubio would have gotten him plenty of attention... of the wrong kind!)
So I guess to sum up, I'd say, okay, I don't see it as being as offensive as you do, but even allowing that some will find it offensive and that it isn't exactly the kind of speech we usually want to hear from our leaders, maybe even those who are bugged by it can see that there might sometimes be an offsetting advantage as well. And I guess I'm just pleased when I see any of our reps fighting back with some... well, I won't say it. 
