Donald Trump has a well-documented pattern of going after the press, and lately his criticism has been aimed most often at female reporters.
Now, one of the women he’s gone after is firing back.
“Nothing to do with gender”
There was a time when it would’ve been unthinkable for a U.S. president to publicly call a journalist “ugly” or label an elected official “retarded.” But what used to be a national scandal has become just another day in American politics.
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has come under renewed scrutiny for a series of attacks aimed at reporters. Nearly all of the reporters who’ve drawn the president’s anger lately have been women, though the White House maintains his comments have “nothing to do with gender.”In November, Trump sparked widespread outrage when he told a Bloomberg White House correspondent, “Quiet, piggy,” after she asked him about the Epstein files, a topic he clearly didn’t want to address.
It didn’t stop there. Days later, he aimed fresh insults at a female CNN reporter, calling her “nasty” and “stupid.”
“Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?”
Thanksgiving brought no pause to the hostility. In a string of Truth Social posts, Trump lashed out at political rivals and public figures. He referred to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz with an ableist slur, and then targeted Rep. Ilhan Omar with an Islamophobic remark, calling her “the worst ‘Congressman/woman’ in our Country… always wrapped in her swaddling hijab.”
And yet, even that wasn’t the end. When another female journalist questioned him about the suspect in an attack on National Guard members in Washington, D.C., Trump snapped: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?”