Obama is on record calling the Tea Partiers “teabaggers” (not in a public address, but either in an interview or in a speech to a friendly group).
To Democrats. But the transcription wasn’t a quote and the writer acknowledges it could be a paraphrase. The word was out there in use by Democrats in its gay sense.
There is film from the McCarthy/Cohn hearings about Communist sympathizers in the State Department and US Military. One of McCarthy’s witnesses was taken to task by those who took outrage at McCarthy’s (rightful) suggestion that there was infilatration in our government by a seditous fifth column.
McCarthy and Cohn were being made to answer questions (the witchhunted became the hunters) as to whether this man was rewarded with undue vacation time etc (if I understood what I was watching). Discussion came to a photo of an officer with the soldier and another man. Roy Cohn had presented a blow up of the photo with just the officer and soldier looking at each other (to imply association with each other).
The Left claimed that McCarthy was engaging in Soviet style “photo forgery” and Roy Cohn (who was gay and died of AIDS) was asked where the photo came from. The hunters who were hounded McCarthy and Cohn then asked Cohn if a “fairy” gave it to him and eventually got around to asking him what he knew of “fairies”. They had a good laugh at him about it.
The homosexual slurs are nothing new to the Left.