No speech, letter or press conference shows Roosevelt saying it. The first time it is pinned on him is a 1948 Time article, published after his death, which passes it on as “a story told around Washington.” Quote Investigator ↗ traces the “he’s our rascal” formula back to an anonymous 1868 newspaper editorial.
“He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch” Anonymous political saying (earliest known version 1868); not documented from Franklin D. Roosevelt, first credited to him in Time, Nov. 15, 1948, as Washington gossip. Via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Use the credit shown above instead.
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Provenance
Where the Roosevelt version comes from
First FDR attribution
Time, “Nicaragua: I’m the Champ,” Nov. 15, 1948
Form of the claim
Secondhand: “a story told around Washington” after Roosevelt’s death (he died in 1945)
Earliest version (template)
The Daily Journal, Wilmington, N.C., July 26, 1868: “Ah! but he is our rascal” (per Quote Investigator)
Wikiquote status
Listed under “Disputed” on Roosevelt’s page
To prime President Roosevelt for the visit, Sumner Welles sent him a long solemn memorandum about Somoza and Nicaragua. According to a story told around Washington, Roosevelt read the memo right through, wisecracked: “As a Nicaraguan might say, he’s a sonofabitch but he’s ours.”
Time, Nov. 15, 1948
This is the earliest attribution to Roosevelt that Quote Investigator and Fred Shapiro cite. The wording is not the popular one (“he’s a sonofabitch but he’s ours”), and Time reports it as hearsay, not as something it witnessed or documented.
Quote Investigator ↗ (2021): the earliest match known to QI is an anonymous 1868 Wilmington, N.C., editorial (“Ah! but he is our rascal”). QI concludes that the evidence for Roosevelt is weak and that “the first attribution to F.D.R was based on a posthumous rumor.”
Time, Nov. 15, 1948 ↗: the first Roosevelt version, introduced with “According to a story told around Washington.”
Wikiquote ↗ lists the line as Disputed. It reports that FDR Library archivist Donald Schewe searched Roosevelt’s papers and found no evidence, and that he judged it “was not the kind of language that Roosevelt used” (citing Robert A. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, 1987).
This is an anonymous political formula with no identifiable author, so Quotle.info asserts no copyright status for the wording. The 1948 Time article that first credits Roosevelt is a separate published work and should not be read as the line’s source.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
One quip, many owners
The “he’s our ___” formula has been handed from one famous name to another for more than 150 years. Even the Roosevelt version disagrees with itself about who he was supposedly talking about.
✕
Somoza (Nicaragua)Franklin D. Roosevelt Posthumous rumor
First credited to him in 1948, after his death, as Washington hearsay in Time ↗. An FDR Library archivist found no record of it (Wikiquote ↗).
✕
Trujillo, or a big-city mayorFranklin D. Roosevelt Conflicting targets
In 1968 Alistair Cooke said Roosevelt was talking about a Democratic big-city mayor. In 1969 the Seattle paper Helix said it was Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic (Quote Investigator ↗). Dick Morris later tied it to Franco (Washington Monthly ↗).
✕
Somoza or TrujilloCordell Hull Later claim
In 1979 Christopher Hitchens wrote that Hull “coined” the line about Somoza (Quote Investigator ↗). Michael Wood credited Hull with saying it about Trujillo (Washington Monthly ↗).
✕
“dictator” variantLyndon B. Johnson Later claim
Credited with “He may be a dictator, but at least he’s our dictator” in a 1990 citation (Quote Investigator ↗).
✕
“rascal” / “scalawag” versionsThaddeus Stevens, Benjamin Butler, Abraham Lincoln 19th-century credits
Stevens got the credit by 1875, Butler by 1877, and Lincoln (who died in 1865) in an 1889 anecdote, all after the anonymous 1868 version (Quote Investigator ↗).
✓Bottom line: it is an anonymous political saying that has been evolving since at least 1868. In Quote Investigator’s ↗ words, the evidence for Roosevelt “was weak,” and his attribution rests on a posthumous rumor.
Context
Why it stuck to Roosevelt
The line spells out a hard-nosed bargain in Cold War foreign policy: putting up with a brutal ally because he is on your side. Pinning it on FDR and Somoza gave that idea a famous speaker and a famous dictator. But Quote Investigator ↗ shows the joke was old long before Roosevelt. It began as party-loyalty humor about crooked candidates, and in 1934 John Franklin Carter’s book The New Dealers told it about two unnamed politicians: “Blank isn’t so bad. He’s our son-of-a-bitch!”
The exact popular wording turns up in Quote Investigator’s chronology in 1962, in Charles Einstein’s baseball book A Flag for San Francisco. There, San Francisco redevelopment official M. Justin Herman used it about a stadium, Candlestick Park: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
As a Nicaraguan might say, he’s a sonofabitch but he’s ours.
Was any of this ever documented?
As Kevin Drum ↗ put it in 2006, after comparing the competing versions: “we don’t know who said it, who it was said of, or where it came from.”
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The true origin
Who actually coined it
AN
Anonymous
Anonymous · U.S. political folk saying, in print since 1868
Nobody can be named. The earliest version Quote Investigator has found is an unsigned 1868 editorial in Wilmington, North Carolina. In it, two unnamed politicians argue about a shady candidate: “He is a great rascal.” “Ah! but he is our rascal.” Over the next century the insult changed (scalawag, scoundrel, so-and-so, son-of-a-bitch, bastard, dictator), and the line was credited to one famous figure after another, from Thaddeus Stevens and Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and Lyndon Johnson.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest Roosevelt attribution
Earliest attribution to Roosevelt: “Nicaragua: I’m the Champ,” Time, November 15, 1948, reported as “a story told around Washington.” Earliest version of the formula known to Quote Investigator: “Our Rebels,” The Daily Journal (Wilmington, NC), July 26, 1868, 2. See Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator, February 24, 2021, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/02/24/rascal/.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch’?” Last verified 2 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/he-may-be-a-son-of-a-bitch-but-hes-our-son-of-a-bitch/