• Why does the current President insult women reporters who ask him difficult questions?
• Why does he insult only female reporters?
• And why is it that only women reporters are asking Trump questions he doesn’t want to answer?
• Related question: why do the male reporters around her act as if nothing has happened? Why do they not demonstrate solidarity with a colleague?
• Lastly, why do the news services report what the President said but not examine why he does this?

Insulting Female Reporters

During his presidency, Donald Trump has repeatedly insulted female reporters, often dismissing them as “obnoxious,” “piggy,” “stupid,” or attacking their looks. In November 2025 alone, Trump lashed out at several female reporters.

Here is a list of notable incidents documented by credible sources.

Rachel Scott (ABC News):   Trump called her “the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place” during a White House roundtable on farm aid in 2025. He also told her she was “a terrible reporter” and accused her of asking hostile questions.

Katie Rogers (New York Times): Trump insulted her appearance, calling her “ugly, both inside and out” in a Truth Social post after she co-authored a piece about signs of him aging in office.

Catherine Lucey (Bloomberg News): On Air Force One, Trump told her “quiet, quiet piggy” when she pressed him with follow-up questions.

Mary Bruce (ABC News): Trump berated her as “a terrible person” after she questioned him about administration transparency.

Unnamed Female Reporter (Air Force One): When asked about releasing MRI results, Trump told her: “It wasn’t the brain because I aced a cognitive test… which you would be incapable of doing.”

CBS Correspondent (unnamed): Trump asked her “are you a stupid person?” when she pressed him about a National Guard murder suspect.

Sources:

• Newsweek – Trump clashes with ABC’s Rachel Scott
• NBC New York – Trump insults NYT’s Katie Rogers
• Newsweek – Trump insults female reporter over MRI question
• CBC – “Quiet, piggy” insult to Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey
• Fox News – Trump calls CBS correspondent “stupid person”
• MSN – Compilation of Trump’s insults toward female reporters

Women Accustomed to Bullying

Most women working in a professional environment have been dismissed, ignored, interrupted, and/or demeaned by men who are either above them in rank or their colleagues. It is not uncommon for men to steal a woman’s ideas, plans, suggestions and discoveries and present them as his own without shame or repercussions. In fact, the whole Matilda Effect Project is based on this happening in science.

Women grow accustomed to that kind of treatment and it wears us down. Not as many of us, though, have been confronted by the kind of in-your-face, explicit and personal insults that Trump directs at female reporters.

Why Only Female Reporters?

I can offer a suggested answer to the first two questions. Trump demeans, humiliates and degrades women because it makes him feel powerful. This has been the case for centuries whenever a weak man needs to feel stronger. White people in the Jim Crow South had the same reason for humiliating Black people. There was an old saying, “I may not be much but at least I’m not Black.” (I cleaned that up a little.)

Trump does this only to women because he’s not a stand-up guy. He’s afraid to confront another man, afraid of a man’s anger or a man’s response. Even though the Secret Service protects his sorry butt, he still can’t bring himself to initiate face-to-face argument with another man, much less an insult.

But a woman, ah, that’s another story. Trump is (or was) a tall man. He could look down, physically on most women. He knows he is stronger than most women. That makes the women around him easy targets for his anger.

We All Know Men Like Him

What he doesn’t realize, though, is that his insults don’t make him sound strong to others. And certainly not to women. We know men like him. We have met, worked with, and even dated them. The insults make him sound weak. He’s a big hat-no cattle kind of guy, all talk, no action when it comes to interpersonal conflict.

Trump is the essence of the phrase, “Kiss up, kick down.” Even with men, he’ll insult and threaten those with less power, like Volodomir Zelensky while sucking up to Vladimir Putin or Xi Xinping.

I think one reason Trump doesn’t like James Comey is that Mr. Comey is taller than he is. Likewise, he has an onus for Sen. Mark Kelly because Sen. Kelly is not just bigger and stronger but has the courage Trump know he lacks.

The Women are Vulnerable

But women, oh he’s an expert at denigrating and controlling women. All women have less power to him. It doesn’t matter how old they are. In fact, the younger the better. He hung out with a pedophile and sexualized his young daughter in public.

He glories in being able to insult grown women, professional women who are standing shoulder to shoulder with the men. That’s easy because the men around her, the colleagues from other new outlets, go silent when he lashes out at a woman.

Physically Inept

Trump is not good at the things most men respect. He is a physically inept person who couldn’t catch a baseball that was lobbed at him. He also can’t play basketball like Barack Obama or football like Gerald Ford, ride a bicycle like Joe Biden, run like George W. Bush or ride a horse like Ronald Reagan. I mean, really. Can you imagine?

He is a draft dodger from a long line of draft dodgers and has no military record to prove his courage. Trump wears no medals, has never been through basic training, and doesn’t know the meaning or importance of the word “brother.”

We know that he’s a coward from the way he disparages our military, their accomplishments, and their families. I would love to see him jump out of an airplane.

Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

As Nichole Wallace of MS/NOW said:

“This is sick shit. This is sick. And anyone in the room is in the room to do a job for their viewers or their readers. But they should go home tonight and think about whether their sisters or their daughters or their moms or their sons or their husbands or their fathers think that there’s something else they should do the next time he calls a female journalist obnoxious, terrible, stupid, nasty, stupid, ugly, terrible, insubordinate or piggy.”

Why do the male reporters say nothing, do nothing, and give him a pass? I’ve heard two reasons.

1. The first is that, “They don’t want to make themselves the story,” But that’s just the point. Like it or not, they are the story. Trump makes them the story. Only they intentionally dodge it, freezing like a deer in the headlights.
2. The second is that they are afraid of the call from their news outlet’s Executive Suite. They don’t want to catch any criticism or have the insult attached to them in any way. After all, it’s just not worth risking your job or your career just to back up a woman.

This is a self-serving way of excusing their own cowardice.

More to Come for Female Reporters

We will hear more of his insults. Trump has no reason to stop doing something he enjoys. The men, from reporters to CEOs, have no reason to make him stop. In fact, most of the people people who stand up to him are women. That says a lot.