Ratfucking is an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks, particularly pertaining to elections. It was brought to public attention by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the book which chronicled their investigative reporting of the Watergate affair, All the President's Men (1974). Origins Woodward and Bernstein's account in All the President's Men reports that many Republican staffers (H. R. Haldeman (pre-1948), Donald Segretti (early 1960s), White House aide Tim Elbourne, Ronald Louis Ziegler, and Dwight Chapin) had attended the University of Southern California and participated in the highly competitive student elections there. At USC, future Watergate scandal participants Dwight Chapin, Tim Elbourne, Donald Segretti, Gordon Strachan, Herbert Porter, and Ron Ziegler were members of Trojans for Representative Government. UPI reporter Karlyn Barker sent Woodward and Bernstein a memo, "Notes On the USC Crowd", that outlined the connection. Fraternities, sororities, and underground fraternal coordinating organizations—such as Theta Nu Epsilon and their splintered rival "Trojans for Representative Government"—engaged in creative tricks and underhanded tactics to win student elections. Officially, control over minor funding and decision-making on campus life was at stake, but the positions also gave bragging rights and prestige. The tactics were either promoted by or garnered the interest of major political figures on the USC board of trustees, such as Dean Rusk and John A. McCone. The young operators called these practices ratfucking. Usage The term received media attention in Australia after it was reported that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used the term in a speech at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. During the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, candidate Ted Cruz said "Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him", a euphemized reference to the term. In August 2017, journalist Marcy Wheeler received the disapproval of the FCC when she used the term in a radio broadcast. Wheeler maintained that the word has become a term of art in political science and is thus not an obscenity; FCC officials disagreed. A more benign use of the term "ratfucking" was commonplace in Southern California (and possibly other) college slang from the late 1950s to at least the early 1960s, meaning a prank. Around that time, Tony Auth was the cartoonist for the Daily Bruin. One of his cartoons showed a large, inebriated rat suggesting to another rat, "Let's go PF-ing tonight!", a play on ratfucking or "RF-ing". The lead story