President Donald Trump said he would release his MRI test results after Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called on him to do so.
President Donald Trump's rhetoric has swung further towards the inflammatory in recent weeks, such as telling a female reporter "quiet, piggy" in November, amid his sinking poll numbers.
Speaking at a rally in rural Pennsylvania on Dec. 9, Trump admitted using the phrase "s---hole countries" in 2018 to describe Haiti and several African nations after initially denying the reports seven years ago.
And increasingly Trump and his allies are successfully reviving use of the so-called "r-word" a term once widely used to describe people with intellectual disabilities that they and their advocates say has evolved into a slur.
The most recent example came on Thanksgiving Day when in a series of Trump's social media posts he called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former Democratic vice presidential nominee, "seriously r-----ed" for opposing his administration's immigration crackdown.
Some of Trump's supporters have always reveled in the president using abrasive language to get his point across, whether to excite the Make America Great Again base, poke opponents in the eye, or both.
"Ground zero for this cultural change is being driven by the (political) right but I don't think it's limited to the (political) right now," Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a liberal-leaning media watchdog group.
"I don't think that traditional media programming has embraced it, but audiences have and people are more willing to say it outside of these conservative circles."
But using the term isn't always a winner for Trump and his allies, and it may have helped cost the president politically after an Indiana Republican lawmaker said Trump's comments led him to vote against Trump's redistricting plan ahead of the 2026 elections.
"Let's be intentional. Let's be compassionate," the Special Olympics, the world's largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, said in a Dec. 4 post on X. "Let's #ChooseToInclude and stop using the r-word, today and always."
For some of Trump's most avid supporters, using the term is a principled stand against what they call "cultural Marxism" being imposed on the country by progressives.
"There are so many words in the English language that have been driven out of use because we've been told they're politically incorrect," Mark Meckler, a political activist who briefly served as CEO of Parler, a conservative self-proclaimed free-speech platform, said during a Dec. 9 livestream program reacting to the controversy.
"The word r----d, you know what it means, I know what it means, we all know what it means," he added. "It means somebody who's dumb or lame or ridiculous. What the left, the thought police, the speech police, they're trying to tell you that when we do this, we are insulting people who are mentally handicapped."
Ironically, "mental retardation" was a term first used by mental health professionals in the late 19th as a Century diagnostic term meant to replace more offensive labels, such as "feeble-minded," experts say.
As late as the 1980s, organizations such as The Arc, which advocates for Americans with intellectual disabilities, still used the term in their official names and in public service announcements featuring liberal celebrities.
"My next child could be r-----ed," singer Barbara Streisand said in a 1970s ad campaign."So could yours."
Calls to retire the term increased as it became colloquially used as an insult to call people who don't have developmental disabilities stupid or foolish. Advocacy groups changed their names and launched new initiatives such as the "Spread the Word to End The Word." In 2010, Congress passed "Rosa's Law" which made "intellectual disability" the correct term to use under federal law and the Supreme Court followed suit in 2014, saying it was the more legally appropriate term during a landmark death penalty case.
But Trump's return has heralded a reversal of what MAGA activists and other conservatives said was a hyper-sensitive "cancel culture."
Over the last year or so that has given the r-word a resurgence, appearing unapologetically in places like Joe Rogan's podcast, Elon Musk's social media posts and Trump's statements.
"The word 'r-----ed' is back and it's one of the great culture victories," Rogan, who endorsed Trump last year, said in an April episode of his popular podcast which has more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube.
Media Matters said its researchers found there was an uptick in the use of the words "r----d" or "r-----d" on Fox News from being used a total of eight times in 2024 to a total of 23 times so far in 2025.
The most frequent offender, the watchdog group said, was the program "Gutfeld!" hosted by Greg Gutfeld, a conservative political commentator and comedian whose program debuted in April 2021 and averages about 3.3 million viewers according to Late Nighter.
Gutfeld's late night show, which has a more humorous tone than other Fox News shows, mentioned the words the most across the network according to Media Matters—increasing from three times in 2024 to 17 in 2025 so far. The next closest show was "The Five" with three mentions.
Earlier this year when Lee Zeldin—now Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator—appeared on the show he used the term to describe Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s,D-N.Y.,ideas.
"You can say that now,it’s OK.It’s now acceptable,"Gutfeld said.
Trump's statements aimed at Walz aren't the first time that the president has used the term to slam a rival. It is something he's used against Democrats and even fellow Republicans.
During the 2024 presidential election he reportedly referred to former Vice President Kamala Harris in the same way, according to The New York Times. Renowned journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his 2018 book, "Fear: Trump in the White House" that Trump used the term to mock his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, a former Republican senator whom he later fired.
While many MAGA-aligned celebrities and activists who support Trump may cheer the term's revival - Trump-supporting musician Kid Rock used it in October to describe Dr. Anthony Fauci - there have long been social conservatives who object to using the term.
When former Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel used the r-word to describe some liberal activists in 2010, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin—a Republican whose son has Down Syndrome—called for his resignation. (Palin has enthusiastically backed Trump in his presidential campaigns.)
Much more recently in Indiana, state GOP legislators rejected a proposed map creating two new heavily red-leaning districts as part of Trump's larger redistricting war. One of the first Republicans to speak against the proposal was state Sen. Mike Bohacek, who noted that his daughter has Down Syndrome.
"This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences," he said.
Podcast host Brad Polumbo, a right-leaning political commentator, has voiced support for some of the administration’s more conservative social positions such as halting medical treatment for transgender inmates. But in a Dec. 1 post on X, the 27-year-old activist criticized Trump’s use of the slur.
"I really hate the president using 'r----d' as an insult," Polumbo said. "Most of the time, I agree with just telling 'offended' groups to get over it. But there are thousands upon thousands of special-needs Americans who will be genuinely hurt by this and feel that the president is putting them down by using the r-word as an insult."
Will Creeley, legal director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a libertarian-leaning free speech group, told USA TODAY the debate about the evolving nature of words often reflect shifting societal norms and power dynamics.
"The interesting thing about word policing is that it's a function of power, and whoever is wearing the proverbial boots at the time," he said.
After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, many conservatives—including prominent officials in Trump’s administration—were outraged at critical comments about Kirk and wanted offenders to lose their employment.
Liberals say Trump's attitudes toward Americans with disabilities is hurting more than just people's feelings. In March, the Trump administration withdrew 11 guidelines under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Disability rights advocates say that will harm accessibility and services for people with disabilities.
"When they came back into office, for some reason,this word and the use of it again was bottled up.It clearly is symbolic," Carusone said."It is an indication that woke is dead;they're back;they have cultural dominance.We're dealing with that now."