President Donald Trump has shown no sign of backing down after courts ruled that he cannot put his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. From covering the building's name with a tarp in the early morning hours to vowing to shut the institution down altogether unless he gets his way, the Republican leader has repeatedly vented his frustration.

A new report now claims that Trump insulted Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), a member of the center's board, by calling the African American female lawmaker "dumb" during a tense phone call with the board — although she fired back with barbs of her own. The call put the president, acting as the institution's board chairman, in direct conflict with a sitting member of Congress inside the center's own governing board.

The dispute reaches beyond a naming fight: chartered by Congress as the National Cultural Center and designated a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, the institution is governed by a board that includes the sitting president and sitting members of Congress.

"He went into a tantrum," Beatty told MS NOW host Ari Melber on Tuesday. "Let me just make it simple: it was the most unprofessional thing that I've ever witnessed or been a part of. He went into name-calling — from trying to say that I was an obstructionist, to saying I was 'dumb.' He said, 'I think you're incompetent.' And I said, 'I know you're incompetent.' And I looked to the chair, who was chairman, and I said, 'Are we really gonna do this? This is unprofessional.' But I was not going to let him call me awful things. And he said he was gonna hold me responsible if something fell out of the ceiling and killed someone."

Beatty added, "And I told him, I said, 'You're already killing people. We're at war. We also have people who are starving. You're doing this.'"

When Trump countered that the dispute was the biggest thing Beatty had ever been involved in, she said she "reminded him that he had more bankruptcies than anybody in the room."

Laughing as she recalled the exchange, she added that "it really went there, because I was not going to let him — he was there in his role as chairman of the board — I was not going to let him bully me, intimidate me.n
Melber observed that Trump has a long history of challenging the intelligence of women, particularly those who are critical of him. He told Beatty that Trump appeared to "berate a distinguished member of Congress who happens to be a woman. He does not like strong women. We know that very much."

Beatty did not contest that characterization, instead pivoting to the argument that Trump should have bigger priorities than putting his name on an arts center.

"This is a man that has us at, people are dying," Beatty told Melber. "This is a man that wants to rename countries, and so many other things."

Beatty's account did not describe how the other trustees on the call reacted, leaving open how the board moves forward after a confrontation between its chairman and a member of Congress.