Gavin Newsom trolled Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt with a satirical picture after she rushed to defend the president’s “piggy” insult.
After the White House released a video showing President Donald Trump, 79, telling Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, 46, to “quiet piggy” over questions about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the California governor was quick to flip Trump’s insult back on him.
Now, the governor is responding to those in the president’s administration who are coming to his rescue.
“There is nothing she won’t defend,” Newsom posted on X in response to a clip of Leavitt telling reporters at Thursday’s press conference that the president is “very frank and honest” and that it’s “one of the many reasons the American people reelected” him, in response to a question about what the president meant when he called a reporter “piggy.”
In a typical Newsom-style post, the governor also shared an accompanying satirical image of Leavitt dressed as The Hunger Games character Effie Trinket.
Trinket acts as a face for the book series’ affluent, yet morally bankrupt Capitol, leading District 12’s yearly “Reaping” ceremony—implying that Newsom believes Leavitt to be a loyal mouthpiece for Trump’s agenda.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Leavitt’s representatives for comment.
Leavitt’s defense of Trump is not the first attempt to tamp down backlash since the president’s insult went viral. On Tuesday, the White House told the Daily Beast that Lucey “behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way toward her colleagues on the plane,” adding, “If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.”
Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar also shrugged off Trump’s remarks, saying that “No one is perfect,” and describing the president as a “picturesque, and difficult, and a different type of politician.”
The press secretary echoed similar sentiments at the briefing, saying that although Trump gets “frustrated with reporters,” he is also “the most transparent president in history” and that everyone should “appreciate the frankness and the openness” they receive from him.
Trump’s history of publicly insulting female reporters precedes his time in office. During his first presidential campaign in 2016, he targeted then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly, claiming she had “blood coming out of her wherever” after she questioned him about calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”
One day after the video surfaced of the president calling Lucey “piggy” on Air Force One, he told ABC White House correspondent Mary Bruce to “learn how to be a reporter.”
Leavitt has consistently defended the president at press briefings. In September, she struggled to explain Trump’s downplaying of domestic violence and has also defended him after emails linked to Epstein surfaced, suggesting he “knew about the girls”—claims the president denies.
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