Maryland Rep. David Trone apologized after he blurted out a racial slur during a March 21 budget hearing as he addressed a Black woman who serves as one of the highest-ranking officials in the Biden administration.

Trone, a 68-year-old Democrat elected in 2018 and running for U.S. Senate in his third term in Congress, claimed he stumbled over his words and misspoke as he tried to say the term “bugaboo,” but instead belted out a racist trope during an exchange with Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Budget and Management, who is Black.

Trone’s use of the slur was inexplicable and seemed out of context as he was discussing business competition, profits and losses, and the impact of corporate tax rates, which he said didn’t hurt his business.

“Can you compete? Can you do it better than the other competitor? And with that, can you create a P&L statement that works? And the tax rate that’s after the P&L, it’s never ever once been a consideration. So this Republican jigaboo, that it’s a tax rate that stopping business investment, it’s just completely faulty by people who have never run a business,” he said. “They’ve never been there. They don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.”

The slur by Trone is a racist stereotype that's been historically used to dehumanize Black people, often implying that they are inferior to whites. 

The term is deeply offensive and not appropriate to use in any context.

There was no indication that Trone had ever been involved in any previous racial controversies, including the use of dog-whistle terms in his public remarks.

In fact, Trone previously called out racism in his home state four years ago as protests gripped the country in the wake of George Floyd's police custody death in Minneapolis.

In June 2020, Trone called attention to a racist effigy that was put up by someone in Grantsville, Md., saying he contacted local authorities and demanded it be taken down immediately.

"If there was any question, racism is still very alive in our country today. We must fight this disgusting behavior with every bone in our body," he wrote on Facebook at the time.

But during last Thursday's hearing, Trone — who owns the national Total Wine & More chain — found himself in a self-inflicted racial controversy as he unleashed the racial slur during his praise of President Joe Biden’s tax proposals.

Perhaps most remarkably, he uttered the slur during the testimony of a Black woman in a major position of power, who often faces intense scrutiny by white men over their eligibility or qualifications, leading to increased diversity and inclusion efforts nati