The White House used an anonymous X account to lash out at a reporter who questioned Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, calling him a vile slur for people with Down Syndrome.
The insult appeared on the “Rapid Response” account used by multiple White House officials, and came during Down Syndrome Awareness Month, which Trump had previously recognized with a presidential proclamation.
It came a day after Trump used an antisemitic slur at a rally, and as Ohio’s MAGA gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s use of an ad featuring an accused child rapist’s wife to attack his Democratic opponent was widely condemned.
The insult was deployed after Trump snapped at the Independent’s Andrew Feinberg, who was among a group of reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon.
“Wait a minute. Wait, wait. Quiet. Quiet!” the 80-year-old fumed, as Feinberg appeared to be asking about the president’s plans for a golf course at East Potomac Park in Washington. But Trump had apparently called on someone else.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you a sick person?” Trump asked, prompting Feinberg to reply: “Not that I know of, sir.”
Trump shot back: “No, I actually think there’s something wrong with you.”
The White House’s rapid response account took it further.
“@POTUS absolutely roasts Mongoloid Moron @AndrewFeinberg for his disgraceful behavior: ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you a sick person? I actually think there’s something wrong with you,’” the account wrote.
The insult against Feinberg used a slur which referred to a discredited Victorian belief that people with Down Syndrome had similarities to East Asian people, who were seen as racially inferior to whites. The World Health Organization deleted the term in the 1960s, because it was so offensive to all concerned.
But the attack on the reporter was then carried on by the devout Catholic convert Vice President JD Vance, with his official X account piling on.
“President Donald J. Trump eviscerates imbecile ‘journalist’ Andrew Feinberg for misbehaving in the Oval Office,” the account wrote.
Feinberg’s response to that: “Mr. Vice President, if you’re going to insult me at least have the guts to tag my account.”
This was not the only contentious exchange between Trump and Feinberg on Tuesday.
“Listen to you. Hey!” Trump said a few minutes before, as Feinberg was among a group of reporters trying to ask their questions. But Trump had motioned to someone else.
“You better—you better—I don’t know who the hell you are, but you better be careful,” Trump said before signaling to another reporter to proceed.
Feinberg reacted to this confrontation by saying Trump had forgotten who he was after just a few minutes.
“I had told him exactly who I was not five minutes before this exchange,” the reporter wrote on X.
When asked who decided to use the vile slur on the anonymous account, no one in the White House owned up to it, instead referring the Daily Beast to Trump’s Oval Office comments.
But Communications Director Steven Cheung—who is Chinese American, and would therefore have been seen as inferior in the twisted world view which led to the slur he used—deployed the same phrase months ago in reference to Feinberg.
Under Cheung, members of the White House press team have used similar language to denigrate reporters and publications.
Last January, when a Daily Beast reporter asked about Trump’s health, they were called “mentally ill.” Spokesperson Davis Ingle has responded to inquiries with a line about “lightweight, glue-sniffing ‘reporters.’” In August, Ingle, who graduated from a university where his father is president, called the Beast a “mentally challenged, lightweight operation.”
Cheung himself has used the word “r----d” in reference to to members of Congress, a Senate staffer, and the Beast’s Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles.
The use of a slur against people with Down Syndrome by the White House was particularly bizarre given that Trump White Houses of the past have recognized Down Syndrome Awareness month. In 2025, Trump posed in the Oval Office with Valentina Duffy, whose father Sean Duffy is his Transportation Secretary, and who has Down Syndrome.
Sean Duffy’s wife is Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy. A Fox News spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Later on Tuesday, Feinberg wrote a story providing more context on his encounter with Trump and Vance.
“For doing my job, I became the target of Trump and his team,” he recapped. “For the record, I had an annual physical earlier this month, and I can report I’m in perfect health.”
