Donald Trump on Tuesday turned to his tried and trusted tactic of attacking a female reporter who’d just asked him an uncomfortable question.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott, during Trump’s visit to the Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa, tried to ask the president if he agreed with the “domestic terrorist” description that administration officials had disparagingly given to Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse who was killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis over the weekend.
“By the way, this is ABC fake news, this one,” said Trump, drawing laughs and whoops from those inside the eatery.
“She hasn’t asked me a good question in years. I think a nice woman, but I don’t really like her too much,” the president continued.
Scott tried to repeat the question but Trump ignored her, waved her away and turned to take a different query from another journalist.
He then quipped: “I’d say ABC is about as bad as they get.”
About a minute later, Scott finally managed to pose her question to the president. She asked: “Do you agree with the assessment from some of your own officials that Alex Pretti is a domestic terrorist or an assassin?”
Trump, this time, replied.
“Well, I haven’t heard that, but certainly he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” he said. “But all of … hey, look, bottom line, everybody in this room, we view that as a very unfortunate incident. OK, everyone, unless you’re a stupid person. A very, very unfortunate incident. I don’t like that he had a gun. I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff. And despite that, I say that’s a very unfortunate…”
The White House’s own rapid response account on X shared a clip of the exchange (see above), which is the latest instance of the president being rude to a female reporter.
Trump has previously asked CBS News’ Nancy Cordes if she is “a stupid person,” called Katie Rogers of The New York Times “ugly” and told Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey to be, “Quiet, piggy!”
