Last weekend, Trump lashed out at Bloomberg News reporter Catherine Lucey for trying to ask him a question about the Epstein files on Air Force One.
Lucey asked why he's pushed back against releasing the files "if there's nothing incriminating" in them. Her question came after Speaker Mike Johnson swore in Arizona Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva, which made her the 218th signatory on the bipartisan discharge petition to compel the Justice Department to release the Epstein files.
Trump simply responded "Quiet, piggy" and didn't answer her question, another example of him avoiding any talk of the Epstein files, which are said to contain detailed lists of some of the late financier, pedophile, and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's most high-profile clients and enablers.
Notably, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee had just released several emails in which Epstein claimed that Trump “knew about the girls” and spent “hours” at his house with one of Epstein’s victims.
You can watch what happened in the video below.
But at a press briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump's reaction, saying it was an example of his "honesty," a trait she suggested the Biden administration lacked in its dealings with reporters, saying:
“The president is very frank and honest with everyone in this room. You’ve all seen it yourself. You’ve all experienced it yourselves."
"And I think it’s one of the many reasons that the American people re-elected this president, because of his frankness. And he calls out fake news when he sees it. He gets frustrated with reporters when you lie about him, when you spread fake news about him and his administration.”
"But he also is the most transparent president in history and he gives all of you in this room, as you all know, unprecedented access. You are in the Oval Office almost every day asking the president questions."
"And so I think the president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is, frankly, a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration, where you had a president who lied to your face and didn't speak to you for weeks and hid upstairs and didn't take your questions."
"So, I think everyone in this room should appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near daily basis."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
But considering Trump avoided answering Lucey's question altogether—and has been anything but transparent about the Epstein files—Leavitt's answer didn't hold water.
She was swiftly called out.
Perhaps anticipating this sort of response from Leavitt, Bloomberg News said in a statement earlier this week that its White House reporters “perform a vital public service” and that the organization remained “focused on reporting issues of public interest fairly and accurately.”
This week, Trump also criticized Mary Bruce, an ABC News correspondent, after she asked Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, about the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Trump responded, “You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter," and defended bin Salman despite the findings of his own intelligence agencies that bin Salman ordered Khashoggi's murder.
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