The sight of the slur shocked and alarmed the mother of a young boy with special needs.

Kimberly Steffes of Joliet, Illinois never imagined a sitting president would use the “R-word,” a derogatory term long reviled by the intellectual disability community and its advocates.

Yet in a Thanksgiving message on Truth Social, President Donald Trump lobbed the anachronistic insult at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, calling the former Democratic nominee for vice president “seriously retarded.”

A few days later, amid a firestorm over the remark, Trump stood by his use of the word when questioned about it by reporters on Air Force One.

“If you have a problem with it, you know what, I think there’s something wrong with him,” Trump responded, referring to Walz.

But to Steffes, the president’s casual use of the slur directly harms her 8-year-old son Trevor, who has Down syndrome. It threatens his very acceptance in society that she and others have been working so hard over the years to forge. “]

Language, she argues, is inextricably linked to real-world barriers, outcomes and opportunities for her child and others with intellectual disabilities.

“For those that think it’s OK to use the R-word … it’s not,” the mother posted on Facebook shortly after Trump’s use of the term. “You don’t have to hurl your insult at a person with a disability for it to be wrong. Your words matter. If they didn’t matter I wouldn’t be fighting for my son’s place in school. I wouldn’t be fighting for my son’s medical treatment. I wouldn’t be fighting for people to presume competence when it comes to my son.”

Once a common schoolyard insult, the word had largely vanished from mainstream speech until recently, primarily due to the concerted efforts of disability advocates.

The Special Olympics declared the term a form of “hate speech” and in 2009 launched a campaign against the slur dubbed “Spread the Word to the End the Word.”

In 2010, then-President Barack Obama signed Rosa’s Law, which required the federal government to use “intellectual disability” in lieu of the increasingly problematic and outdated word. The legislation with bipartisan support was named for a 9-year-old girl with Down syndrome who, with her family, had championed the nationwide change in rhetoric.

At the time, Obama had invoked the words of her then 11-year-old brother, Nick.

“Now this may seem to some people like a minor change, but I think Rosa’s brother Nick put it best. …He said, ‘What you call people is how you treat them. If we change the words, maybe it will be the start of a new attitude towards people with disabilities.’ That’s a lot of wisdom from Nick,” the president said, as the children’s parents teared up in the crowd.

Yet the slur appears to be creeping back into everyday vernacular, as a handful of politicians and celebrities — from billionaire Elon Musk to Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to popular podcast host Joe Rogan — have recently used the term.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump had also reportedly used the word to describe opponent Vice President Kamala Harris during a dinner with donors. Trump was also accused calling actor and Illinois native Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, the R-word when she was a contestant on the reality television show “The Celebrity Apprentice.” Matlin responded by saying that “the term is abhorrent and should never be used.”

When high-profile figures amplify the word in this fashion, its general use on social media skyrockets immediately after, suggesting its broader renormalization, according to recent research.

Experts who have studied the slur also found that the label and its negative connotations have a tangible impact on how folks with intellectual disabilities are perceived and accepted by others, adding greater consequence to the recent shift in rhetoric.

The term’s “resurgence online and in public discourse is deeply troubling,” the National Down Syndrome Society said in a statement.

President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One en route to Washington on Nov. 30, 2025, where he was questioned by reporters about use of the “R-word.” (Pete Marovich/Getty)

“As the language used by our political leaders carries significant weight in shaping actions and societal attitudes toward individuals with disabilities, we are dismayed and disheartened that President Trump used this harmful term in a recent social media post,” the statement added. “The R-word perpetuates harmful stereotypes and barriers people with Down syndrome and other disabilities face.”

Northwest Indiana Republican State Sen. Michael Bohacek, whose daughter has Down syndrome, also rebuked the president’s language, threatening to vote against a Trump-supported congressional redistricting plan after his use of the slur.

The legislator from LaPorte County, which is about an hour from downtown Chicago, added  in a recent Facebook post that the president’s “choices of words have consequences.”

As for Steffes, she remembers when the R-word was a common taunt in the 1980s.

But language and policy advanced over the decades, slowly becoming more inclusive and empathetic to those with intellectual disabilities like her son, a young boy with Down syndrome who loves Illini basketball, animals and cracking jokes.

Now the mom fears the nation is “going backwards, when a president is willing to say our kids are less than.”

“Not using the word is progress — it’s progress in having the world see our kids as capable and competent and to have a worth in society,” she said during a Tribune interview. “It’s about just being human.”

Renormalization, ramifications

When high-profile voices use R-word, researchers have found that its use by the general public dramatically rises, essentially renormalizing the slur.

In January, Elon Musk used the slur on his social media site X, targeting a Finnish graduate student who’d accused him of “rapidly becoming the largest spreader of disinformation in human history.”

Afterward, use of the word exploded on the site, spiking more than 200% over the next two-day period following Musk’s post, according to a study by professors Bond Benton and Daniela Peterka-Benton at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

“He used the term and we instantly saw a significantly larger number of people using the term,” Bond Benton said, noting that use of the word on X in the months since then has continued to remain higher than it had been before. “We can see that it is becoming a more frequently used term on the platform overall and in a pretty dramatic fashion.”
The researchers used the same method to track the R-word on X after it was used by Trump and found usage of the slur roughly doubled, rising from 40,000 posts beforehand to about 80,000 in the hours after the president’s Thanksgiving message.

The mass proliferation of the term has troubling ramifications, the professors said.

“To me, it also shows how fragile society is,” said Daniela Peterka-Benton. “For years the disability community has worked really, really hard to stamp out the use of the word because of the implications it had. And how quickly all of that can go out the window.”

This resurgence of the word also “sends the message that there is a group of people who are less than,” a sentiment that can leak into policymaking decisions and funding for programs for vulnerable groups, she said.

“Then it has … real implications,” she added. “Because we see these people as less, we don’t want to give them the supports to help them with some of the issues they face.”

Disability rights groups and education organizations nationwide have decried sweeping layoffs in the U.S. Department of Education’s special education offices in October, though officials have said jobs might be restored now that the federal shutdown has ended.

The cuts coincided around the 50th anniversary of the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The legislation, signed by President Gerald Ford in 1975, promised all children with disabilities “a free, appropriate public education.”

But many advocates fear these gains will be rolled back by the Trump administration.

“These layoffs circumvent the will of Congress and dismantle 50 years of precedent upholding rights for students with disabilities,” said an October letter signed by hundreds of disability rights and education groups in opposition to the recent job cuts.

‘Horribly hurtful’

The Republican legislator from northwest Indiana made international headlines for lambasting Trump’s Thanksgiving post and threatening to vote against an effort to redraw state congressional district lines in favor of Republicans.

“This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences,” state Sen. Michael Bohacek wrote on Facebook the next day.  “I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority.”

The father of a 24-year-old daughter with Down syndrome called the president’s use of the R-word “horribly hurtful.”

“This is not the first time he’s used this language … it’s becoming almost mainstream,” Bohacek added during a recent interview with the Tribune.

He’s faced intense backlash for his stance. The day he criticized the president on Facebook, his family received a bomb threat at their home, the lawmaker said.

Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter has also chastised Bohacek’s position on social media.

“BRILLIANT! In order to honor his daughter with Down’s Syndrome, State Sen. Michael Bohacek will FIGHT to hand a majority to the political party that wants to abort Down’s kids,” she posted on X.

In 2012, Coulter came under fire for calling then-President Barack Obama the R-word on the same social media site, known then as Twitter.

Coulter responded to criticism of her use of the slur saying, “oh, screw you,” adding that the term had been used colloquially to mean “loser” for decades.

“But no, no, these aggressive victims have to come out and tell you what words to use,” she added during the interview with Fox News radio network.

Special Olympics athlete Frank Stephens, who has Down syndrome, wrote an open letter reproaching Coulter’s use of the slur.

“You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV,” the letter said. “I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.”

Presidential example

In an April episode of the top-ranked podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” its namesake host used the R-word, calling its comeback “one of the great culture victories.”

But research has revealed that the slur can have concrete impacts on the way folks with intellectual disabilities are perceived, often with damaging repercussions.

A 2020 study from the Ohio State University found that the perceptions and attitudes of roughly 250 undergraduate students who participated in a survey changed drastically when they encountered the R-word versus the phrase intellectual disability.

Although the surveys were otherwise identical, researchers discovered that the two different labels produced extremely different results.

Those who encountered the slur “were more likely to have negative beliefs and… negative connotations,” said researcher Darcy Haag Granello, professor of counselor education.

“People who received a survey that used the R-word were significantly more likely to believe that people…with intellectual disabilities should be excluded from society, that they should be sheltered and tucked away from everybody else,” she said.

They were also significantly less likely to believe that people with intellectual disabilities should be empowered to make their own decisions in life, Granello said.

“And I think the one that is maybe more insidious — less likely to believe they were human beings who had the same rights and privileges and basic humanity as themselves,” she added.

Deborah Bruns, a recently retired professor in the Special Education Program in the School of Education at Southern Illinois University, was dismayed but not surprised by Trump’s use of the slur on Thanksgiving.

She recalled how Trump, as a candidate, mocked a New York Times reporter with a disability in 2015.

“I was done. Right then and there, I didn’t think he should have continued the next day,” Bruns said in a Tribune interview. “I thought people would be upset and make noise and say this is not someone that should even be considered to be a candidate to lead the country.”

Yet it’s even more egregious — and damaging — that Trump used the slur as the nation’s leader, she added.

“And he is unrepentant about it, which makes it 100x more awful as it comes from the person who should be setting an example for our country and beyond,” Bruns said in a recent post on Facebook. “All in the disability community have worked so long and hard to stop the use of the ‘R-word.’ There is no ‘right’ use for it when used to bully and ridicule.”

https://www.dailypress.com/2025/12/06/donald-trump-r-word-slur/