President Donald Trump has gone out of his way to insult yet another female reporter, this time dismissing NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor as “aggressive” and telling her to take it “nice and easy.”
The exchange occurred as the president answered media questions after signing a bill awarding congressional medals to the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team.
Initially, Alcindor cornered Trump on Venezuela, asking the president if he intended to claim more oil assets from the country, following reports on Wednesday that the U.S. had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
“It wouldn’t be very smart for me to tell you that,“ the president replied. “We’re supposed to be a little bit secretive. You’re a very big-time reporter, and I don’t think I want to tell a big-time reporter, or a small-time reporter, that. But we are knocking out drugs at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”
Around seven minutes later, Alcindor attempted to ask the president another question, only for the president to tell her, “Wait, wait, wait, you have to be nice and easy, nice and easy,” before addressing the men standing around him and adding, “She’s very aggressive.”
After answering another reporter’s question, he returned to Alcindor, permitting her to ask a question about the photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Friday that featured Trump, and other rich and powerful men like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and former President Bill Clinton.
“There were new Epstein photos released today showing you and also Bill Clinton and Steve Bannon. What was your reaction to those new photos that were released?” Alcindor asked.
“I haven’t seen them, but everybody knew this man,” Trump said. “He was all over Palm Beach, he has photos with everybody. There are hundreds and hundreds of people that have photos with him, so that’s no big deal. I know nothing about it,” Trump replied.
The president has developed a reputation for treating female reporters in particular with hostility, something noted by his own niece, Mary Trump.
“His misogynistic attacks against reporters in particular are increasing,” Mary Trump said on her show late last month. “It means that he’s increasingly comfortable lodging such attacks… I think it’s also a sign that he’s a little rattled.”
In the past two months alone, Trump has called a female reporter “piggy” while telling her to be quiet, dismissed CNN’s Kaitlan Collins as “stupid,” insulted a New York Times’ reporter’s looks, called another female reporter “stupid” three times in quick succession, described another female reporter as “obnoxious” and a “terrible reporter” for asking him about his lethal boat strikes, and threatened to revoke ABC’s broadcast license after fielding a question from the network’s White House Correspondent, Mary Bruce.
It’s also not the first time Trump has clashed with Alcindor, having previously accused her of asking him a “racist question” in 2018 after she asked him whether his embrace of nationalism had emboldened white nationalists.
He also shushed Alcindor during an exchange in 2020, at the height of the George Floyd protests, when she asked him how he planned to address the issue of systemic racism. “You are something,” Trump told the journalist at the time.
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