Donald Trump attacked a female reporter for her “stupid question” after she joined a press gaggle aboard Air Force One.
The 79-year-old president used a flight back from Mar-a-Lago on Sunday night to outline his tough stance on the escalating protests in Iran. He warned that if Tehran followed through on recent threats to target U.S. military or commercial bases, “we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before” and with a “very, very powerful force.”
When an unidentified CNN reporter then asked, “Do you think Iran takes your threats seriously?” Trump dismissed it as “a stupid question”—insisting that Iran has “been through it for years with me” and pointing to the killings of Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani and ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as proof of his credibility.
“I think so. Don’t you think so, CNN? Don’t you think so? Wouldn’t you say that they probably do at this point? After going through it for years with me, being hit—Soleimani, al-Baghdadi—the Iran nuclear threat wiped out. Don’t you think?” he said.
Piling on the sarcasm, he went on, “And then you just had Venezuela. Don’t you think? She says, ‘CNN, do you think they take your threat seriously?’ Wouldn’t you say they do after all of the things we’ve done? What a stupid question.”
Trump has a history of personal attacks on journalists or TV hosts who dare to challenge him, especially if they’re female.
Last month, he criticized CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in a post on Truth Social, calling her “always Stupid and Nasty” while even misspelling her name.
He also lashed out at ABC reporter Rachel Scott, accusing her of being obnoxious after she questioned him about boat strikes.
“You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place,” he said. “Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious, a terrible—actually a terrible—reporter. And it’s always the same thing with you,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, he labelled NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor as “aggressive, ”telling her to take it “nice and easy” when she asked if he intended to claim more oil assets from Venezuela following reports that the U.S. had seized an oil tanker off the country’s coast.
Other female journalists have also faced harsh rebukes. He labeled New York Times reporter Katie Rogers “ugly” after she co-wrote a story about his lighter second-term work schedule, berated ABC’s Mary Bruce for posing what he called “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question” about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and shouted “Quiet, piggy!” at Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey when she asked about the release of the Epstein files.
Most notorious was his attack on Megyn Kelly at a Republican presidential debate in 2015 when he responded to a challenge from the then-Fox News host by complaining that she had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
Meanwhile, relations between Washington and Tehran have sharply deteriorated as weeks of economic-driven protests in Iran have grown into one of the most serious challenges to the clerical government in years, leaving hundreds dead and large numbers arrested.
Iranian authorities have responded with an aggressive security crackdown, drawing warnings from Trump, who said he is weighing “very strong” military responses if the violence reaches what he described as an unacceptable threshold. At the same time, Trump has claimed Iranian leaders are signaling interest in talks with the United States, even as the unrest and repression continue.
Iranian officials have pushed back forcefully against those statements, issuing their own warnings in response to the possibility of U.S. action.
Tehran has accused the United States and Israel of fueling the demonstrations and has said any American attack would be met with retaliation, including strikes on U.S. military assets and other interests in the region.
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