Donald Trump Reportedly Called Kamala Harris This Shocking Slur. It Doesn’t Mean What He Thinks It Does.

In September, former President Donald Trump reportedly hosted a dinner meeting for Republican donors during which he referred to his presidential race opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as “retarded.”
As the sister of a man with Down syndrome, I don’t believe the word means what he thinks it does.
Take a deep dive into the etymology of the word and you’ll find that it comes from the 15th century Latin retardare, meaning “to keep back or hinder.” But so many of the 7 million people who live with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in this country have refused to be held back or hindered.
With support, they attend mainstream classes at K-12 schools. They’re valuable members of sports teams, in community theater, in dance and art classes and in math and chess clubs. Many graduate from university. They live rich, full lives surrounded by friends, family members, classmates and colleagues.
However, even though the R-word doesn’t accurately define or capture the reality of these individuals’ experiences or abilities, it still hurts.
“Did you hear about it?” I asked my brother on the phone after The New York Times reported the alleged incident.
“I heard about it,” he told me. “He’s wrong.”
Throughout our young and middle adulthood, I watched my brother live the dream in Ventura, California. He played every sport Special Olympics offered. He had a job, a YMCA membership and a weekly men’s club meeting at the local pizza parlor. He had a longtime girlfriend, and he volunteered at the local Boys and Girls Club. At the latter, a co-worker once referred to him as a “retard.” My brother karate-kicked him in the head. I don’t advocate violence, but in this case, the response seems warranted.
He’s the inspiration for my forthcoming book, “Down Syndrome Out Loud: 20+ Stories to Change Your Mind about Disability” (Sourcebooks, 2025). I interviewed two dozen people with IDD around the world for it. I’ve learned about the Special Olympics’ campaign “Spread the Word to End the Word,” in which celebrities including “Glee’s” Jane Lynch and Lauren Potter (the actress who played Becky Jackson, a cheerleader on the show with Down syndrome) filmed PSAs urging people to stop using the R-word.
Apparently, Trump didn’t watch that PSA.
I wonder if he’s ever met Kayla McKeon, the first registered U.S. lobbyist with Down syndrome and the manager of grassroots advocacy for the National Down Syndrome Society. Does he know about Charlotte Woodward, an activist with Down syndrome fighting for equal opportunities in work and health care? She’s collaborated tirelessly with House Representatives to pass the Charlotte Woodward Organ Transplant Discrimination Prevention Act.
I’m willing to bet Trump’s never watched “The Loud House” on Nickelodeon. Jared Kozak, a voice actor with Down syndrome, has spent hours and hours perfecting the role of C.J. — a character who shares his genetic condition — for the show. Did he watch the feature film “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” after which star Zack Gottsagen became the first actor with Down syndrome to present at the Academy Awards? I’m guessing no.
“Trump is mean and disrespectful to people. That is not a kind of person who should be president,” Gottsagen told me recently. He understands that disrespect leads to disregard for a person’s basic humanity. We siblings and parents and friends of people with Down syndrome over age 50 know firsthand what that ignorance used to look like for this demographic.
In 1975, when my brother was born, doctors told my mother to institutionalize him despite the fact that journalist Geraldo Rivera had recently released a damning expose on Willowbrook State School, a New York institution that housed over 6,000 people with IDD. Robert F. Kennedy, visiting the institution in 1965, described those individuals as “living in filth and dirt, their clothing in rags.”
If we elect Trump as president once again, I fear we’ll return to this dark age of cruelty toward those who look and sound slightly different from the majority — those like my brother, who once tried to shake hands in a supermarket with a child and stood bewildered as her mother snatched her away, screaming, “Don’t talk to people like him!”
The National Institute of Child Health and Development estimates that 2% to 3% of children in the U.S. have some form of intellectual disability. That’s well over 2 million kids who, this election year, are in danger of hearing and internalizing words like “retarded” and “mentally disabled” (another of Trump’s favorite insults for Harris). Thankfully, social media has given children and adults with IDD a presence and a platform, along with thousands and thousands of followers who believe in celebration, not denigration.
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People with intellectual and developmental disabilities have, for the past four decades, challenged those who would hold them back and hinder them from reaching their goals. They fight for the right to play on Little League teams. They defy high school officials to ensure they’re placed in college prep classes. They celebrate their differences on stage and screen and on Capitol Hill.
Or they live quiet lives full of kindness and compassion — something of which Trump himself appears to be incapable.
Melissa Hart is the author of “Better with Books: 500 Diverse Books to Ignite Empathy and Encourage Self-Acceptance in Tweens and Teens,” as well as two middle-grade novels with characters inspired by her brother. She’s an MFA instructor in Creative Writing for SNHU. Find her on Instagram and X @WildMelissaHart.
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