The White House on Monday leveled a sharply personal attack against CNN reporter Kristen Holmes after she asked President Donald Trump a pointed question during a news conference, crossing a barrier rarely breached by politicians to invoke her children.
“Jon Ossoff said you’d rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp and build the ballroom than do your job as president,” Holmes said. “What is your response?”
Trump answered Holmes’s question with an insult to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia), whom he called a “Pee-wee Herman look-alike,” referring to the Paul Reubens character.
Then the White House’s “rapid response” account on X took up the altercation, posting a video clip of the exchange and assailing Holmes as a “disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession.”
In a follow-up tweet, the account dipped into a more personal line of attack: “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question,” the White House wrote. “They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its social media posts.
Trump’s personal attacks on journalists have been a defining feature of his combative approach to the press. Though he has criticized reporters throughout his political career, his critiques of women journalists, particularly those representing CNN, have grown more heated in recent months. And the administration has increasingly used official White House social media accounts to escalate what might once have been spur-of-the-moment exchanges.
Most recently, at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in July, Trump said that CNN anchor and Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins should “just smile” — a misogynistic trope — and likened her appearance to that of Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender activist villainized in conservative circles.
He followed up by posting an edited image imposing Collins’s likeness on an image of Mulvaney, which was later shared by an official White House account.
Trump’s critique of Holmes, a senior White House correspondent, continued during the news conference.
At another point, the president shushed her: “Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. You’re very disrespectful in front of this young man, okay? Don’t you find her disrespectful? He understands. Quiet. Who are you with?”
“I’m with CNN,” Holmes replied.
“Fake news. You’re fake news. You’re loud. You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re fake news,” Trump said. “Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet. You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news.”
CNN, in a statement, defended Holmes, calling her “one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House” and said it rejects the attacks “in the strongest possible terms.”
“This afternoon, she did her job and asked the President of the United States a tough, relevant, and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people,” a CNN spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press.”
Holmes’s colleagues on CNN’s White House team rushed to her defense. “What a horrible to thing to say. Kristen is an incredible reporter, person and, above all, mother,” White House correspondent Alayna Treene wrote on X. “I don’t understand such a reaction to a journalist asking the president for his response to something a Democratic senator has leveled against him.”
“Kristen is an excellent reporter who asked a good question, to which the president gave a fulsome answer,” Betsy Klein, a senior White House reporter, wrote. “You know what’s disgusting and inhumane? Bringing her perfect children into this.”
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