President Donald Trump verbally abused a female reporter who asked him about the Epstein files aboard Air Force One en route to his latest golf vacation, calling her “piggy” and trying to silence her.
“Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” Trump told veteran White House reporter Catherine Lucey, now with Bloomberg, after she asked about the possibility that the Department of Justice’s investigative files on the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein might incriminate him.
Video of Friday evening’s incident shows Trump wagging his finger at Lucey, who is standing just off-screen.
Lucey declined to comment, as did the White House Correspondents’ Association.
The pool reports from that flight failed to mention Trump’s comment, and it received little attention until Tuesday.
Bloomberg is among the three wire services whose print reporters were removed from the press pool earlier this year after Trump lost a legal battle with The Associated Press. Trump initially banned the AP entirely from the pool ― the group of reporters who attend events in the White House in spaces too small for the entire press corps and who travel with him aboard Air Force One ― for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico by his preferred name, the Gulf of America.
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The AP sued and the judge in the case ruled that the White House could not treat the AP any differently than other wire services. But instead of allowing the AP back into the pool, Trump instead removed Bloomberg and Reuters, as well.
Now, none of the wire services’ print reporters are regularly in the pool, and appear to be given access to Air Force One trips when the White House cannot find pro-Trump influencers to accept seats, which typically cost upward of $1,500.
Lucey in April 2018, when she was with the AP, was the first to ask Trump about his relationship with porn actress Stormy Daniels. Trump lied in response, claiming he did not know about the hush money payment to keep her quiet.
It is unclear whether Trump remembered that episode when he insulted her Friday on the flight from Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C., to Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump spent the weekend playing golf.
As he took questions from the pool Sunday evening before boarding the plane for the flight home, he attacked Lucey again, this time for asking him about Nick Fuentes, the racist, antisemitic thought leader whom Trump once hosted for dinner.
“You are the worst. You’re with Bloomberg, right? You are the worst. I don’t know wh― why they even have you,” he told Lucey.
This past weekend was Trump’s 15th trip to his Mar-a-Lago country club since returning to office. He has spent a total of $67.4 million of taxpayer money on travel and security costs for his golf trips, and has been on one of the courses he owns for 81 days since returning to office in January.
The House is set to vote Tuesday on releasing the bulk of the late sexual predator’s case files.