White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a shameless explanation for why the president of the United States appeared to melt down and stooped to insulting a female reporter’s appearance after he was asked a question about Jeffrey Epstein.
The president, on Air Force One, 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 Republican-controleld 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, his press secretary played off the incident as a show of the unprecedented access the press corps supposedly had to the president, 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.
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.
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