\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep your voice down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s enough of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBe nice; don\u2019t be threatening.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cQuiet, piggy.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a sampling of what the president of the United States has said to and about female journalists during his time in office\u2014and most recently to Catherine Lucey, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg. On Friday on Air Force One, Lucey asked Donald Trump about the Epstein files. He answered her first question, but when she followed up, the president bent his head down and pointed his finger, the way you might chastise a screaming child or shoo a stray cat. \u201cQuiet. Quiet, piggy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lucey had clearly touched a nerve. Two days later, Trump announced that he would endorse the House\u2019s vote on the release of the Epstein files, likely because he knew that the House had the numbers to do so and would go forth with or without his support. But this category of remark is part of a long-running pattern for the president: Trump\u2019s time in American politics has been marked by repeated attempts to insult and demean female journalists.<\/p>\n
At the start of his first presidential campaign, Megyn Kelly, at the time a Fox News journalist, asked Trump at a primary debate about reports that he had referred to women as \u201cfat pigs,\u201d \u201cdogs,\u201d and \u201cslobs.\u201d Trump didn\u2019t deny the accusation, and instead made a joke about how he said those sorts of things only about Rosie O\u2019Donnell. Later, talking about the debate on CNN, Trump said of Kelly: \u201cThere was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.\u201d And the president has repeatedly insulted Yamiche Alcindor, now a White House correspondent for NBC. At a press briefing about COVID-19 in 2020, Trump replied to her question about his prior statements on governors\u2019 ventilator requests by saying, \u201cThat\u2019s why you used to work for the Times and now you work for somebody else \u2026 Be nice; don\u2019t be threatening.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s vitriol against those exercising their First Amendment rights is not limited to women. Today, during a White House visit with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the president said of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi that \u201ca lot of people didn\u2019t like that gentleman\u201d and that \u201cthings happen,\u201d suggesting the journalist may have deserved his killing. (In 2018, Saudi officials lured Khashoggi to Turkey and murdered him, dismembering his body with a bone saw.) At a 2024 campaign rally, he fantasized about shooting journalists. His comments to female reporters, however, have another through line: Why can\u2019t you just be silent like a woman should?<\/p>\n
Trump has an even longer history of denigrating women more broadly. This is reportedly not the first time that he has used the word piggy to describe a woman. Alicia Machado, the winner of the 1996 Miss Universe pageant, has alleged that Trump once called her \u201cMiss Piggy\u201d and made other demeaning comments about her weight. And the president\u2019s longtime feud with O\u2019Donnell has included much public sexism, including Trump calling her a \u201cbig, fat pig\u201d in 2006. (Most recently, the president has floated the prospect of revoking O\u2019Donnell\u2019s American citizenship, a move that legal experts say would be blatantly unconstitutional.) And this is just how Trump talks to women, leaving aside the many credible accusations of sexual abuse and misconduct against him, which he has continued to deny.<\/p>\n
When asked for comment about Trump\u2019s remarks on Air Force One, a White House official told The Guardian, \u201cThis reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane \u2026 If you\u2019re going to give it, you have to be able to take.\u201d The White House did not provide any evidence of inappropriate behavior. \u201cGiving it\u201d is doing one\u2019s job, apparently, and \u201ctaking it\u201d is being called a pig by the president for asking him a question.<\/p>\n
If the president needs a political motive to treat women respectfully in public, he has one. This month\u2019s elections saw high turnout among women supporting Democratic candidates, and evidence suggests that young, highly educated women are becoming more and more disgusted by the MAGA movement. But Americans should also hope that their leaders are guided by basic decency at the very least. \u201cThe United States is now a nation run by public servants who behave no better than internet trolls, deflecting criticism with crassness and obscenity,\u201d my colleague Tom Nichols wrote earlier this month. Trump\u2019s sexist comments are an attack on women\u2019s dignity\u2014and by making them, he strips the presidency of its dignity too.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by Isabella Cotier<\/p>\n The Social Cost of Being a Morning Person<\/p>\n By Liz Krieger<\/p>\n As my wake-up time has inched earlier, I\u2019ve written more, exercised more consistently, and been able to approach challenges with clarity, well before afternoon fatigue sets in.<\/p>\n But every transformation comes with a price. And mine has been paid in evening hours\u2014those crucial moments when families traditionally reconnect after a day apart, when teenagers may be more likely to open up, when friends gather and marriages deepen in the comfortable darkness after responsibilities have been met. I have become a person who gives the best of herself to the morning and offers only the dregs to the night.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani \/ The Atlantic<\/p>\n Explore. Can you cheat at conversations? A new AI tool promises to improve social interactions but instead makes them worse, Julie Beck writes.<\/p>\n Watch. In September, Shirley Li recommended the most exciting films heading to theaters through the end of the year\u2014some of which are out now.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. \u201cKeep your voice down.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s enough of you.\u201d \u201cBe nice; don\u2019t be threatening.\u201d \u201cThere was blood coming out of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[878,3703,19553,3949,2315,81,668],"class_list":{"0":"post-34383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-asked","9":"tag-epstein","10":"tag-piggy","11":"tag-quiet","12":"tag-told","13":"tag-trump","14":"tag-woman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n