California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter's campaign blasted out a donor email laced with the phrase "F*** Trump", repeated four times, including in the subject line, just one day after what has been described as the most recent assassination attempt on President Donald Trump's life at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. The Sunday email, first reported by Fox News Digital, drew immediate condemnation from Republicans and raised fresh questions about the tone Democratic candidates are setting in the wake of political violence.
The Republican National Committee responded with a blistering statement. RNC spokesman Nick Poche told Fox News Digital:
"Katie Porter is a degenerate loser who is sick in the head, and it's telling that failing Democrat candidates think their path to victory is to fan the flames of violence right after an assassination attempt."
Poche went further, warning that the broader Democratic Party bears responsibility for the environment its candidates are creating. He added that "anyone who refuses to condemn Porter's remarks is just as responsible for the rise in left-wing political violence as Porter is."
Fox News Digital reached out to Porter's campaign for comment. No response was reported.
The fundraising email went out Sunday, by one account, roughly 18 hours after the incident at the White House Correspondents Association dinner that Saturday. Writer and X influencer Bethany Mandel shared the email with Fox News Digital and posted about it on the platform. She framed the timing with a pointed comparison:
"Imagine Barack Obama surviving three assassination attempts and 18 hours later, a Republican sent a fundraising email like this."
Mandel's reference to "three assassination attempts" reflects the broader narrative around threats to Trump's safety. The fact that Porter's campaign chose this moment, hours, not days, after the latest incident, to deploy a profanity-filled solicitation is what turned a routine donor email into a national story.
Porter is not new to controversy on the campaign trail. She previously drew scrutiny for using a whiteboard with a profane anti-Trump message at the California Democratic convention, a stunt that delighted her base but reinforced concerns about her judgment among voters outside the progressive bubble.
The email is not an isolated episode. Porter has faced growing questions about her temperament and conduct, questions that matter more now that she is asking California voters to trust her with the governor's office.
Fox News Digital noted that Porter had previously been scrutinized for shouting and using expletives on camera at a staffer, and for threatening to quit an interview with a journalist. That latter incident, a September 2025 CBS News interview with correspondent Julie Watts, became its own small firestorm. National Review reported that Porter cut the conversation short after Watts asked how she would address the roughly 40 percent of California voters who supported Trump.
Porter told Watts during the exchange: "I don't want to keep doing this. I'm going to call it. Thank you." When pressed, she added: "Not like this I'm not. Not with seven follow-ups to every single question you ask." CBS noted that other gubernatorial candidates answered the same question without similar problems.
A candidate who cannot handle a follow-up question from a CBS reporter is now running to lead a state of nearly 40 million people. The profane donor email fits the pattern: when the pressure rises, Porter defaults to hostility.
Porter's email did not land in a vacuum. The article placed it alongside comments from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who said just days before the assassination attempt that Democrats are in an "era of maximum warfare." Jeffries has not backed down from those remarks.
The juxtaposition is hard to ignore. One of the party's top congressional leaders uses the language of war. Hours after a threat to the president's life, a gubernatorial candidate in the nation's largest state fires off a profanity-laden fundraising blast. Neither appears inclined to reconsider the tone.
The California governor's race has already produced its share of controversy, from debate-stage evasions to candidate scandals. But Porter's email stands out because it arrived at a moment when any serious political figure would have paused, or at least chosen different words.
Porter is competing in a crowded Democratic primary for governor. At the time of the CBS interview incident, she was reportedly leading the field. That lead, however, has not insulated her from criticism within her own party's orbit, and the fractures in the Democratic field have only deepened as the primary season grinds on.
The question now is whether California Democratic voters care. Porter's base clearly responds to aggressive anti-Trump messaging, that is the whole point of an email like this. The calculation is transparent: outrage generates clicks, clicks generate donations, and donations fuel the campaign.
But the timing reveals something about priorities. When a president survives an attempt on his life, the baseline expectation, the floor, not the ceiling, is that political figures refrain from using the moment to raise money with vulgar attacks on the target. Porter's campaign did not clear that floor.
The broader California gubernatorial contest will continue to generate headlines. But this one crystallizes a specific failure: the inability, or the unwillingness, to distinguish between opposition and recklessness.
As of the article's publication on April 29, 2026, Porter's campaign had not responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment. No apology was issued. No statement walked back the email's language or its timing.
That silence speaks. A campaign that sends an email like this on purpose, four uses of the same profanity, including in the subject line, is not going to apologize. The email was not an accident or a rogue staffer's mistake. It was a deliberate fundraising strategy built on rage.
Republican critics see the episode as part of a larger pattern of Democratic rhetoric that, at best, ignores the climate of political violence and, at worst, contributes to it. Poche's statement framed it in exactly those terms, arguing that the party "has completely lost its mind."
Whether voters agree will play out over the months ahead. But the facts of this episode are not in dispute. A candidate for governor of California used a fundraising email to repeat a profane attack on the president four times, less than a day after someone tried to take his life.
If that does not tell you where the Democratic Party's incentives lie, nothing will.
