From ‘Piggy’ to ‘Ugly’: Donald Trump Intensifies Verbal Attacks on Women Covering the White House

As President Donald Trump fields questions about a series of politically sensitive issues — especially his stance on releasing the Epstein files — his interactions with the White House press corps have grown increasingly hostile.

Trump has long been known, and often applauded by supporters, for taunting political opponents with derisive nicknames (Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Governor Newscum, Kamabla and Marjorie Traitor Greene). In recent weeks, however, his barbs toward members of the press have become more personal and more frequent.

Routine press conferences and informal Q&As have turned sour, and coverage he dislikes is dissected in public. Amid the tensions, women in the White House press corps have repeatedly found themselves the focus of his anger.

The first of the latest flare-ups to draw widespread attention occurred aboard Air Force One on Friday, Nov. 14. While Trump, 79, was taking questions from a group of reporters, Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey began to ask if there was anything “incriminating” in the Epstein emails.

The president responded by pointing his finger in her face and snapping, “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy.”

The insult is one Trump has used before, but hearing it from a sitting president stunned many observers.

In a statement, a White House official defended Trump’s comments, claiming, “[Lucey] behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane.”

“If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.”

The official did not explain what, specifically, was considered improper about Lucey’s behavior. Another high-profile member of the White House press corps, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, quickly came to Lucey’s defense, saying she does “a great job.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also backed the “piggy” remark when questioned about it at a later press briefing, framing it as an example of Trump’s blunt style.

“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,” Leavitt, 28, said. “But he also is the most transparent president in history, and he gives all of you in this room, as you all know, unprecedented access.”

“And so I think 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,” she continued. “I think everyone in this room should appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis.”

Two days after the “piggy” episode, during the flight back from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, tensions flared again as he answered a question about Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes.

“Well, I found him to be good. I mean, he’s said good things about me over the years. He’s, I think he’s good,” he said, referring to Carlson. “We’ve had some good interviews. I did an interview with him where we had 300 million hits.”

When a woman interjected with a follow-up question, Trump paused with an irritated expression. “Will you let me finish my statement? You are the worst.”

“You’re with Bloomberg, right?” he continued. “You are the worst. I don’t know why they even have you.”

The camera angle made it unclear which reporter he was addressing, leaving open whether he was singling out Lucey again or admonishing another journalist.

Trump kept up the attacks during an Oval Office press conference with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Nov. 18. As ABC News’ Mary Bruce tried to ask about Epstein, Trump turned his answer into a personal rebuke.

“You know, it’s not the question that I mind. It’s your attitude,” he told Bruce. “I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions…”

“You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” he added later. “As far as the Epstein files, I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert.”

“People are wise to your hoax,” Trump went on, before seemingly threatening her network’s broadcast license: “I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and is so wrong. And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should look at that.”

During his extended exchange with Bruce, Trump also told her she “ought to go back and learn how to be a reporter,” announcing that he was done taking her questions.

Days later, on Wednesday, Nov. 26, Trump moved his criticism online, posting on his Truth Social account about The New York Times and its White House correspondent Katie Rogers. He appeared to be referencing a piece to which Rogers contributed that suggested he was confronting the “realities of aging in office.”

The article also mentioned a viral clip in which Trump seemed to doze off during an official event — something he has denied.

“The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again,” Trump wrote. “The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”

He labeled Rogers’ work a “hit piece” and described the Times as an “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.”

The New York Times reacted to the president’s insults in a statement later the same day, saying, “The Times’s reporting is accurate and built on firsthand reporting of the facts. Name-calling and personal insults don’t change that, nor will our journalists hesitate to cover this administration in the face of intimidation tactics like this.”

The paper added: “Expert and thorough reporters like Katie Rogers exemplify how an independent and free press helps the American people better understand their government and its leaders.”

The White House, meanwhile, said in a statement: “President Trump has never been politically correct, never holds back, and in large part, the American people re-elected him for his transparency.”

“This has nothing to do with gender,” the White House spokesperson continued, adding, “it has everything to do with the fact that the President’s and the public’s trust in the media is at all time lows.”

Hostility toward the press has been a hallmark of Trump’s political brand — his “fake news” refrain is nearly a decade old. But these recent dust-ups add to a long-running pattern in his treatment of female journalists in particular.

Those clashes began well before he entered the White House, during the 2016 Republican primaries. After Megyn Kelly moderated a primary debate and opened by asking Trump about his past comments about women, she quickly became one of his favorite targets.

“I have zero respect for Megyn Kelly,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News, Kelly’s outlet at the time. “I don’t think she is very good at what she does. She’s highly overrated.”

He also implied that she was menstruating while moderating the debate in another now-infamous quote: “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” he told CNN.

In response to Trump’s attacks on Kelly, Elisa Lees Munoz, the executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation, told The Independent, “We know that he does not discriminate on gender with regards to his criticism and his attacks, but we have particularly noticed the way that he attacks female journalists.”

“It is a very gendered attack, which really demonstrates some misogynistic tendencies that we see online and in the streets every day,” she added. “It is really designed to shut them up, to try to get them to stop working, to belittle, to humiliate.”

During his first presidential term, Trump had three bitter exchanges with Black female journalists that went viral over the span of one month: November 2018.

It stood out, Northwestern journalism Professor Ava Thompson Greenwell, Ph.D, told The Independent, because there are so few Black women in the White House press corps.

“When he goes after Black women because their numbers are so few, it just stands out more,” she said.

Two of those confrontations occurred during the same press gaggle, on Nov. 9. Trump first launched into a tirade about CNN contributor April Ryan, then a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks.

“You talk about somebody that’s a loser,” Trump said of Ryan. “She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.”

Later in the briefing, he scolded CNN’s Abby Phillip for asking about special counsel Robert Mueller, who was then overseeing an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question,” he told Phillip. “But I watch you a lot, you ask a lot of stupid questions.”

Phillip later reflected on Trump’s comments on CNN, saying, “It’s part of a pattern and it is a really clear pattern that’s been going on for years now. He seems to not be tolerant of taking difficult questions, particularly from women.”

Another frequent target has been PBS’ Yamiche Alcindor, also a Black woman. In November 2018, Trump accused her of racism for asking whether his decision to call himself a “nationalist” during his campaign might embolden White nationalism.

Two years later, at the height of the COVID era, Trump said Alcindor was being “threatening” when she pressed him on his administration’s pandemic response.

“It’s always getcha, getcha… And you know what? That’s why nobody trusts the media anymore,” he said. When Alcindor attempted to restate her question, he cut in again.

“Excuse me. You didn’t hear me. That’s why you used to work for the Times and now you work for someone else,” he said. “Look, let me tell you something: Be nice… Don’t be threatening. Be nice.”

Thompson Greenwell said that Trump’s interactions with reporters — particularly women — go beyond offhand insults or subtle slights.

“What he does is what we would call a micro-assault,” she explained. “It’s not subtle at all. It’s direct, it’s in your face, it’s a tongue lashing, it’s meant to cause harm. And that’s the definition of a micro-assault.”