Since he entered politics a decade ago, President Trump has always had an adversarial relationship with the media.
But in recent weeks, and with disturbing frequency, his interactions with some women journalists covering his administration have become even more crude and misogynistic.
On Air Force One last month, Catherine Lucey, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg, tried to ask Trump a follow-up question about the Justice Department’s files on his former pal Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in 2019. Trump leaned in, jabbed a finger at her, and said, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
Even for Trump, who has publicly scorned countless people, many of them women, for decades, this insult was particularly ugly.
Of course, Trump offered no apology. At the daily press briefing, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters that they “should appreciate the frankness and openness” they get from Trump.
That “frankness and openness” crept up again a few days later. Trump laced into Nancy Cordes, CBS’s chief White House correspondent, when she asked why he blamed the Biden administration for allowing the entry of an Afghan national who worked with US troops during the war against the Taliban. Trump officials, she said, confirmed that such cases were “thoroughly vetted” by the Justice Department and the FBI. That man, who was granted asylum in April, allegedly shot two National Guard members, one of them fatally, in Washington, D.C., last month.
“Are you stupid?” Trump said to Cordes. “Are you a stupid person?”
At another press conference, Trump lashed out at Rachel Scott, ABC’s senior political correspondent, for quoting Trump’s own words about releasing video about a second strike that killed two survivors of an airstrike in September on a boat in the Caribbean Sea.
After falsely claiming that he never said he had “no problem” with the release of the second strike video, Trump said Scott was “terrible” and “the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place.”
On his social media site, Trump called Kaitlin Collins, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, “always stupid and nasty” and criticized her reporting on construction of his new ballroom. On Instagram, Collins said, “Technically, my question was about Venezuela.”
With his presidency being consumed by numerous controversies from the Epstein files to questions about his health, Trump is at his most feral when facts overtake his mendacious narratives.
During a 2018 interview with fellow journalist Judy Woodruff, Lesley Stahl said she had asked Trump in 2016 why he continued to attack the press. She said that Trump told her, “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”
Trump popularized the term “fake news” in the American political lexicon, which has also become a favorite of his authoritarian buddies like President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary. But he seems to reserve a special hostility for women who question or fact-check him.
Trump insults their looks. He impugns their intelligence. He questions their character. The president makes it personal and rarely stops at a single comment. It’s usually a barrage of barbs on camera or on social media probably intended to wound them so badly they’ll think twice about challenging him again.
When Trump doesn’t like the message, he denigrates the messenger.
Overall, Trump’s relationship with the media has been even more contentious and fractured in his second term. In February, the administration banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One apparently because the wire service continued to use the name “Gulf of Mexico,” as it has been known for centuries, instead of Trump’s jingoistic “Gulf of America” in its reports.
Dozens of journalists left the Pentagon in October rather than sign on to new administration-mandated restrictions on their reporting imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In his life before politics, Trump eagerly ran to New York’s tabloids to craft myths about his business genius and sexual prowess. Using the pseudonyms “John Barron” or “John Miller,” he even acted as his own spokesman when speaking to reporters.
Trump still expects the media to play along in his charades. He wants every network and publication to be his personal public relations firm. He wants his story told and digested his way even if it has no connection to the truth.
But Trump’s treatment of women journalists is steeped in misogyny. And he knows that his social media minions regularly target women with a ferocity that few men will ever face.
Since Trump’s “piggy” remark, each successive affront against a woman journalist has gotten less attention. Certainly, in each moment, no one else in the room has stood up to defend them. That’s what Trump wants. Such silence normalizes a president who singles out for derision women doing their job and fosters the dangerous message that being a man means degrading women who forget their place.
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com.