President Donald Trump on Wednesday ignored a question from a Fox News reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, only to instead launch a threat at her fiancé, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), during a press gaggle at Joint Base Andrews.
Heinrich asked Trump if he had a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leading the president to dodge the question and turn to his side to remark, “Her husband votes against me all the time. Can you imagine?”
He then turned back toward Heinrich, “I don’t know what’s with him. You better ask what’s with him.” (Note: Heinrich and Fitzpatrick are engaged, a Fox News spokesperson told The Philadelphia Inquirer.)
The president continued to drone on, “He likes voting against Trump. You know what happens with that? It doesn’t work out well.”
The threat arrives less than a week after Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican in a district that went for Kamala Harris in 2024, joined Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) in backing a failed effort to end Trump’s unpopular Iran war by requiring that he seek congressional authorization.
Fitzpatrick, an incumbent who ran unopposed in the GOP primary, is looking to retain his seat in November after Massie lost his primary battle against his Trump-backed opponent, Ed Gallrein, in Kentucky on Tuesday.
Hours after Trump’s threat, Fitzpatrick hit the president with “bad news” about his Justice Department’s nearly $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a money pot that critics have described as a “slush fund.”
“We’re going to try to kill it,” Fitzpatrick told MeidasTouch reporter Scott MacFarlane.
He told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “every dime” the U.S. government spends should be going to “over half of Americans that are living paycheck to paycheck.”
“That’s got to be at the forefront of every single House or Senate member’s mind … for that and many other reasons, I am completely objecting to this, and I’m going to do everything I can to fight it,” he said.
Trump’s remarks to Heinrich about her fiancé earned a heap of criticism on social media, including one user on X who called them “morally repulsive.”
