President Donald Trump left viewers baffled and uneasy on Tuesday after going off-script at a White House lunch, randomly assigning one of his top officials a strange nickname and then following it up with an even stranger question.
The strange moment unfolded during a lunch for Republican lawmakers in the recently repaved Rose Garden, where Trump delivered a long-winded speech blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown, now entering its fourth week.
In the middle of his remarks, he suddenly shifted gears after seemingly recognizing a familiar face in the crowd decided to reveal his new nickname.
“We have Darth Vader. You know Darth Vader, right? Darth Vader is a man who, I think, is sitting right — is that Darth? Stand up please. Does everybody know — they call him Darth Vader, I call him a fine man. But he’s cutting Democrat priorities and they’re never gonna get them back,” Trump sneered as he sounded both gleeful and vindictive.
“They’ve caused this, and they’ve really allowed us to do it,” Trump lied.
The nickname was aimed at Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought — a powerful but low-profile figure who’s become one of Trump’s most aggressive enforcers during the shutdown.
Vought, the architect of the controversial conservative policy blueprint Project 2025, has used the government freeze to push through sweeping budget cuts, targeting projects in Democratic-led states while overseeing thousands of layoffs.
Trump once tried to distance himself from Project 2025, calling it “someone else’s plan,” but he’s now fully embraced its architect — even giving him a villainous nickname straight out of Star Wars.
Social media was quick to call out the president.
“I’m sorry, what is happening here? As a non-American, I assumed this was AI because it makes less sense than usual but alas, it is real and I am once again flabbergasted,” a Threads user shocked to learn the video was in fact real.
One fedup user added, “What on earth is he rambling about? He isn’t making any sense” while another asked in frustration, “Why does he name drop, then ask if people know who he’s talking about like he’s setting up some stand-up bit?”
Other users were seemingly baffled and confused. “Is Donald Trump displaying signs of senile dementia?,” one user asked Grok and while another vented, “Dafuq? Seriously! Dafuq?!”
“I’m so tired of ‘Republican priorities’ vs ‘Democrat priorities.’ How about American priorities — food prices, schools, housing, healthcare, peace. Trump stop dividing us!” this Threads user pointed out.
“Darth Vader? As in…star wars? Is he okay?,” another commented.
“Government shutdown or not, Trump’s framing it as a victory tour: if you oppose him, your priorities are gone forever,” this X user observed.
Another commenter one-up Trump’s Star Wars reference. “If Vought is Darth Vader, what does that make Trump?” asked the user with a photo of Senator Palpatine.
Trump said during the address that his administration was in the process of cutting major projects in cities and states run by Democrats, such as the $20 billion Gateway Tunnel project in New York.
Earlier this week, Vought announced more than $11 billion in infrastructure funding cuts targeting Democratic-run cities, and boasted online that “bureaucracies hate the American people.” He’s also reportedly ordered agencies to consider permanent staff reductions — a move eerily similar to what he outlined in Project 2025’s call for “reductions in force” and “political loyalty” tests for federal workers.
Thousands of federal workers have been off the job since the government shutdown on Wednesday October 1, and thousands more, who are considered essential workers, such as members of the military and air traffic controllers, have been working without pay or very little pay.
The Pentagon has taken money out of its budget to pay members of the military.
Trump has continued to politicize the stalemate between Democrats and Republicans and has continued to blame Democrats for the closure, despite the fact that Trump and Republicans control the government.
The Senate needs Democratic support to pass a stopgap measure to reopen the government.
But Democrats are demanding that the spending bill include protections for Affordable Care Act subsidies, something Trump drastically cut when he and Republicans rammed through the President’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” the bill last summer without any bipartisan support.
The sweeping bill extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and pays for other administration priorities. But it does so by cutting more than $1 trillion from health programs in the largest such federal rollback in history.
