His unexpected remarks during his visit to the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, which were meant to be a welcome from the new FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, got several staffers to walk out of the room, two anonymous employees told Politico.

This comes a little over a week after Kennedy fired thousands of HHS employees, 3,500 of whom were employed at the FDA. Kennedy's goal is to reduce the government health workforce from 82,000 down to a total of 62,000. 

Among many other things he said that upset his audience, Kennedy accused FDA employees of being 'sock puppets' of the industries they regulated.

However, it was his use of a word now considered to be a slur by some that shocked attendees the most.

'Because of my family's commitment to these issues, I spent 200 hours at Wassaic Home for the Retarded when I was in high school,' Kennedy said, in a reference to the Wassaic State School for the Mentally Retarded in Wassaic, New York. 

The school closed in 2013 and was once an institution that catered to people with developmental disabilities.

Politico reported that several FDA employees misheard Kennedy's use of the R-word and thought he was making a derogatory remark.

He made the reference while talking about rising autism diagnoses in children, asserting that on his visits to Wassaic he 'never saw anybody with autism.' 

Kennedy recently made the bold claim that Americans will know what's causing the country's 'autism epidemic' by September, after he launched a 'massive testing and research effort' involving hundreds of scientists.

DailyMail.com approached the Department of Health and Human Services for comment about Kennedy's speech to the FDA.

A spokesperson from the department has told other outlets that he wasn't using the r-word in a derogatory way.

Kennedy's remarks come as other people in President Donald Trump's orbit, including Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, are making purposeful attempts to bring it back into the lexicon.

'The word "retarded" is back, and it's one of the great culture victories that I think is spurred on, probably, by podcasts,' Rogan said on a Thursday edition of the Joe Rogan Experience.

Musk called people who were trolling him retards while he was livestreaming himself playing the game Path of Exile 2 earlier this week. He also lobbed the insult at Trump adviser Peter Navarro, calling him 'Peter Retardo' because of his affinity for tariffs.