Last week, President Trump snapped at a journalist when she asked him about Jeffrey Epstein. “Quiet!” the president told Catherine Lucey, a reporter for Bloomberg News. “Quiet, piggy.”
Mr. Trump’s use of a schoolyard epithet raised eyebrows. “Disgusting and completely unacceptable,” scolded CNN’s Jake Tapper. A press watchdog group said that “targeting women reporters with humiliating insults should not be tolerated.”
On Thursday, Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, put a different spin on the remark.
“I think everyone in this room should appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis,” Ms. Leavitt told reporters during a briefing in the West Wing.
Ms. Leavitt, who was asked by a journalist to explain what Mr. Trump had meant when he used the term “piggy,” presented the following logic:
“The president is very frank and honest with everyone in this room. You’ve seen it yourself. You’ve all experienced it yourselves. And I think it’s one of the many reasons that the American people re-elected this president, because of his frankness. And he calls out fake news when he sees it. He gets frustrated with reporters when you lie about him, when you spread fake news about him and his administration.”
She added: “The president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is, frankly, a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration.”
(Ms. Leavitt was seeking to draw a contrast between Mr. Trump, who fields questions from reporters on a near-daily basis, and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who met infrequently with the press.)
Bloomberg News said in a statement earlier this week that its White House reporters “perform a vital public service” and that the organization remained “focused on reporting issues of public interest fairly and accurately.”
Mr. Trump has shown flashes of frustration with journalists in recent days. On Tuesday, he berated an ABC News correspondent, Mary Bruce, in the Oval Office after she asked Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, about the killing of a Washington Post columnist by Saudi agents in 2018.
The president called the question “horrible” and later told Ms. Bruce, “You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter.”
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
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