{"id":273780,"date":"2025-11-20T15:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273780\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T15:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:27:07","slug":"telling-a-reporter-quiet-piggy-was-shocking-even-for-trump-margaret-sullivan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273780\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling a reporter \u2018quiet, piggy\u2019 was shocking \u2013 even for Trump | Margaret Sullivan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catherine Lucey, who covers the White House for Bloomberg<\/a> News, was doing what reporters are supposed to do: asking germane questions.<\/p>\n

Her query to Donald Trump<\/a> a few days ago during a \u201cgaggle\u201d aboard Air Force One was reasonable as it had to do with the release of the Epstein files, certainly a subject of great public interest. Why had Trump been stonewalling, she asked, \u201cif there\u2019s nothing incriminating in the files\u201d.<\/p>\n

His response, though, was anything but reasonable.<\/p>\n

It was demeaning, insulting and misogynistic.<\/p>\n

He pointed straight at Lucey and told her to stop doing her job.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuiet. Quiet, piggy,\u201d said the president of the United States.<\/p>\n

From what I could tell, none of her colleagues in the press corps immediately rose to her defense. Things just moved on \u2013 business as usual, in a sense.<\/p>\n

And yet, if I were making a timeline of Trump\u2019s use of the press as a punching bag, this moment would deserve a place on it. Maybe it was his pointing. Maybe it was his direct command, as if he were in charge of what a reporter is allowed to ask.<\/p>\n

Maybe \u2013 probably \u2013 it was the nasty name-calling, which is meant to put a reporter in her place in front of the world. Maybe \u2013 probably \u2013 it was the lack of protest from other reporters.<\/p>\n

This, after all, is life in Trump\u2019s America. Consider just the past day or so.<\/p>\n

Trump celebrated the Saudi crown prince, who, according to a 2021 US intelligence report<\/a>, approved the killing of a Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. (The crown prince has denied involvement in the killing.) The US president gave him a hero\u2019s welcome to the White House.<\/p>\n

Trump insulted and threatened ABC News and its fine reporter Mary Bruce<\/a>, who also asked germane questions, about Khashoggi as well as the Epstein files. \u201cI think you are a terrible reporter. It\u2019s the way you ask these questions,\u201d he said<\/a>. He called ABC a \u201ccrappy company<\/a>\u201d and said its license \u201cshould be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it\u2019s so wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re supposed to be used to this by now.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the president\u2019s fervid supporters must approve of this sort of thing; they seem to see it as a way the president is using his power and position to diminish the \u201celite\u201d, who he has taught them to despise.<\/p>\n

But getting used to it is dangerous. We all get worn down. \u201cWhat can you do?\u201d shrug even the caring among us.<\/p>\n

But, for me, \u201cquiet, piggy\u201d somehow breaks through. It should be a bridge too far, not business as usual.<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it have been something to see the entire press corps shout back at Trump, in defense of their colleague? Wouldn\u2019t it have been something to see them walk away from the gaggle?<\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause access beats out solidarity, every day of the week,\u201d Bill Grueskin, a former Miami Herald and Wall Street Journal editor who is a professor at Columbia Journalism School, posted on Bluesky<\/a>. If any members of the press corps had somehow managed to push back and defend their colleague, they undoubtedly would have been punished by exclusion from these press briefings.<\/p>\n

So, yes, the access problem.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m sorry to say, they also don\u2019t push back because they\u2019re so used to it. After all, it\u2019s nothing new. It\u2019s just an especially egregious example of what\u2019s been going on for years.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been watching these moves of Trump\u2019s for a long time. I was the Washington Post\u2019s media columnist during the entire first Trump term, so I got an up-close look at how he constantly disparaged the press and its representatives \u2013 especially women, and even more especially, women of color.<\/p>\n

He often clashed<\/a>, for example, with Yamiche Alcindor, who then covered the White House for the PBS NewsHour, condemning her supposedly \u201cnasty\u201d questions. This year, he called Alcindor<\/a>, who now works for NBC, \u201csecond rate\u201d and demanded that she, too, \u201cbe quiet\u201d. He publicly called April Ryan, a longtime White House reporter, \u201ca loser<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nothing changes \u2013 it only worsens \u2013 because Trump gets away with it. His stalwart supporters don\u2019t seem to care. The members of the press corps may write a sternly worded letter (or not), but they normalize it, too, by their inaction.<\/p>\n

Will this \u201cquiet, piggy\u201d moment make a difference? Only for those who care about decency in public officials and in American society.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s an old-fashioned notion. And I\u2019m not sure there are enough of us who remember that it matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Catherine Lucey, who covers the White House for Bloomberg News, was doing what reporters are supposed to do:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-273780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}