White House press corps should be grateful Trump called female reporter ‘piggy,’ Leavitt says
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a shameless explanation for why President Donald Trump insulted a female reporter by calling her a “piggy” after he was asked a question about Jeffrey Epstein.
On Air Force One, Trump wagged a finger in a young female reporter’s face and barked, “Quiet, piggy” after being asked about the content of emails released by the House Oversight Committee that showed Epstein, a child sex trafficker and convicted pedophile, accusing Trump of “knowing about the girls” involved in his criminal operations. Trump has denied this.
On Thursday, Leavitt played off the incident as a show of the unprecedented access the press corps supposedly had to the president, as compared to Joe Biden, even as the White House has sought to push established pillars of U.S. journalism like wire services out of similar gaggles.
“Look, the president is very frank, and honest with everyone in this room,” Leavitt said. “He gets frustrated with reporters when you lie about him, when you spread fake news about him and his administration. But he is also the most transparent president in history.
“I think the president being frank and open and honest to your faces rather than hiding behind your backs is a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration,” she added.
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Karoline Leavitt refused to apologize for the president’s sexist remark aimed at a reporter (Getty)
The president has a long history of making sexist and rude remarks about the appearance of female members of the media, a trend that began during his first run for the presidency in 2016. That year, he said that then-Fox News anchor and debate moderator Megyn Kelly had “had blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” after she challenged him about a host of insulting and degrading names he’d used to describe various women.
At the time, Trump brushed off those concerns by snidely attributing them to his thoughts about one woman: Comedian Rosie O’Donnell, one of many with whom the president has nursed a grudge over the years.
The latest blow-up between Trump and the Bloomberg reporter he described as “piggy” came within days of another flare-up of the president’s anger at a reporter in the Oval Office, this time over a question to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA found he had authorized.
The two exchanges point to a broader dynamic emerging: The president seems increasingly angry with news coverage of his second administration, which at the end of its first year appears to be floundering under the pressures of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and continued economic woes in America.
Even outlets like Fox News are now reporting that the president’s second-term approval rating is at its lowest point, with less than four in 10 Americans supporting his record as president in some polling.
His treatment of women has always been a divisive and checkered part of Trump’s record, enraging and disgusting many while some of his more hardline supporters are clearly attracted by it.
In the summer ahead of the 2016 general election, audio of Trump appearance on the set of Access Hollywood became a defining issue of the race as the former businessman was heard on a hot mic describing how he believed that women “let” famous men “grab” them by their genitalia. The crude and sexualized way Trump spoke about women in the clip nearly caused a GOP revolt, but the party held firm behind its nominee.
Later, Trump would go on to be found liable by a New York jury of sexual abuse in a lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll, who claimed that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York department store in late 1995 or early 1996.
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E. Jean Carroll successfully brought suits against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, and was awarded a total of $88.3 million over the two cases (AFP via Getty Images)
As his polling woes worsen and media outlets remain fixated on the scandal surrounding his past friendship with a convicted pedophile, the president continues to be bombarded with questions about Epstein, to his great irritation.
His administration has now spent months on the topic, first using it to the president’s advantage as conservative influencers eagerly touted the White House’s supposed transparency. That dynamic quickly shifted as further releases from the investigation of Epstein, who died in a Manhattan detention center in 2019, during Trump’s first term, were delayed.
Finally, the Justice Department and FBI put out a joint statement claiming that a supposed list of Epstein’s clients and co-conspirators did not exist, and affirming that the administration would not publish any further documents from the probe.
That set off a firestorm online and in various political circles around the United States as the issue proved quickly to have a saliency that few others did. Congressional Democrats and four Republican members rallied behind a discharge petition aimed at forcing the administration to release the files in full, which grew into a full-scale Republican rebellion once that resolution was successfully dragged to the House floor.
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Donald Trump is flanked by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. At a White House meeting this week, Trump blew up at a reporter for questioning bin Salman about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which bin Salman was found to have ordered (Getty Images)
The story dominated headlines for weeks, and renewed this past week with the publication of new emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. The latest cache, released by a bipartisan committee, mention Trump multiple times in messages between Epstein and his closest confidantes; the pedophile is clear in several that he believes he has leverage over Trump due to the latter’s alleged connections to his child sex network.
White House officials and the president himself have repeatedly denied this, and furiously warred with Republicans for not dropping the issue. The scandal has even led to Trump lecturing his own base of voters via Truth Social postings.
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bull****’ hook, line, and sinker,” he wrote in July on Truth Social.
