White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday defended President Donald Trump’s decision to call a female reporter “Piggy” on Air Force One, claiming the insult reflected the “frankness” that helped him win a second term.
“Look, the president is very frank and honest with everyone in this room,” Leavitt said when asked by a Washington Post reporter about the comments during a news briefing. “You’ve all seen it yourself. You’ve all experienced it yourselves. And I think it’s one of the many reasons that the American people reelected this president because of his frankness.”
As he faces political blowback for his handling of the files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump has escalated his disparagement of female reporters.
On Friday, Trump told Catherine Lucey, a Bloomberg reporter, “Quiet, Piggy,” in response to her questions aboard the president’s plane. “Our White House journalists perform a vital public service, asking questions without fear or favor,” a Bloomberg News spokesperson told The Post this week. “We remain focused on reporting issues of public interest fairly and accurately.” Lucey did not respond to a request for comment.
Several days later at a White House event with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump called Mary Bruce, the chief White House correspondent for ABC News, a “terrible person and a terrible reporter” and called her network “fake news.” He also urged his Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, to revoke ABC’s broadcast licenses in response to Bruce’s questions, which concerned both the killing of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the Epstein files.
Bruce asked Mohammed why the American people should trust him following the CIA’s conclusion that he ordered the brutal killing of Khashoggi. She later asked Trump why he had not released the Epstein files as he said he supported a congressional measure to unveil the documents.
“I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” Trump said. “And we have a great commissioner, the chairman, who should look at that, because I think when you come in and when you’re 97 percent negative to Trump and then Trump wins the election in a landslide, that means obviously your news is not credible and you’re not credible as a reporter.”
The FCC issues licenses to ABC for affiliate stations owned by its parent company, Disney, but the network itself does not hold one that could be revoked.
Bruce did not respond to a request for comment, nor did spokespeople for ABC or Disney. The FCC also did not respond to a request for comment.
The president called Khashoggi “extremely controversial” and defended Mohammed, whom the CIA previously concluded had directly ordered the dissident journalist’s murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. “Things happen,” Trump said.
“Scolding a U.S. reporter for asking questions about MBS ordering a fellow journalist to be bone-sawed to death signals to dictators everywhere that they can murder journalists with impunity,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Trump’s personal attacks on reporters have been a defining feature of his combative style of politics. During the 2016 election, he said that then-Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly “had blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” when she aggressively questioned him during a presidential debate. He also mocked a New York Times reporter with a disability, Serge Kovaleski.
In his second term, Trump has turned to Carr to enforce his crackdown on the news media. Earlier this year, ABC suspended late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel for about a week. The decision was made following threats Carr made to the network after comments Kimmel made in the wake of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
On Wednesday, the White House issued a news release calling ABC “fake news” and a “Democrat spin operation.” The White House regularly disputes media reports, but it is rare for the administration to publish a release solely focused on attacking an outlet’s coverage.
At 12:49 a.m., Trump posted another critique of ABC on Truth Social: “Why does ABC Fake News keep Jimmy Kimmel, a man with NO TALENT and VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS, on the air? Why do the TV Syndicates put up with it? Also, totally biased coverage. Get the bum off the air!!!”
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