Donald Trump’s piggish, savage behavior hits new low

One question I’m often asked is “How can you tell Donald Trump has gotten worse since his first presidential administration?”

Well, in the 40 years of covering presidents, not one of them ever called a reporter “piggy” before. Not even Donald Trump. Not until this week.

He said “Quiet, piggy” mere inches from the face of a female journalist in a gaggle of reporters on Air Force One. No other reporter addressed this insult. Members of the traveling press pool just went on asking questions as if this were normal, acceptable behavior. Had I been there, I would have asked him point blank: “Sir, do you think that’s a dignified response from the president of the United States to call a reporter a piggy?” Of course, some would say this is why I’m not currently a member of the traveling press pool. 

But someone needs to be blunt with the president. I happily volunteer to do so.

Trump has been abusive, rude, petulant, unprofessional and undignified. He has lied to and threatened us in the press nearly every time he sees us. This week, just like every other week during this term, we have seen him at a new low. 

That’s another reason I know he has gotten worse. Each week is worse. When his niece, Mary Trump, said “There is no worst with Donald — each day is worse,” she was quoting from the Donny Bible.

This week’s low-water mark showed Trump not only has no dignity, decency, honor or sense, but when he called a reporter “piggy,” it was so childlike as to be laughable. How can you even satirize his actions? No adult treats any other adult that way unless they’ve lost their mental faculties or never had them. Instead of acting like an adult, he acted like a child sticking out his tongue.  

Another recent spectacle points out how he is getting worse: His meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who visited the Oval Office Tuesday. As they sat on chairs with other administration officials gathered on sofas, surrounded by reporters, ABC’s Mary Bruce asked Trump a question about bin Salman’s involvement in the death of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi — and then she asked him about the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Bruce did her duty in asking questions of both men, and she did it professionally. Trump responded by calling her “fake news” and said the problem wasn’t the questions she asked, but the way she asked them. Tough. If you can call a reporter “piggy,” then you can take a hard question that you don’t like. If you can’t, then how in the hell can you handle tough foreign leaders? Trump lashed out angrily and again, no one followed up Bruce’s question or admonished the president for acting like a petulant child. 

The crown prince shifted uncomfortably in his chair at the question about Khashoggi. He kneaded his hands. He grinned. He nodded, and he glared at Bruce. Some said bin Salman looked nervous. But I’ve seen that look in pro-fighters, football players and serious gangsters. He wasn’t nervous. He was trying to hide how angry he was. If Bruce had asked that question in Saudi Arabia, chances are good we would never see her again. 

That fact alone emboldened Trump to dress her down and threaten her as he did. He even called her “insubordinate.” 

Bruce isn’t his subordinate. She doesn’t work for him. She is a member of the public. Trump is a temp worker voted into office by the public. If anyone was insubordinate it was President Trump. He is a public servant, and as such is required to serve the public. You don’t admonish the American public while praising a foreign prince — especially not one who is an international pariah with a well-known violent nature.

Trump didn’t challenge bin Salman for one simple reason: The president would love to be able to get away with the very behavior the crown prince does. With bin Salman seated next to him, Trump felt the courage to lean into his performance a bit. He playfully slapped at him, and they smiled and giggled like the best of friends.

“Donald Trump feels the same way about dissidents that Mohammed bin Salman feels. “Trump’s envy is that he can’t at least – openly – go kill his critics. But he’s getting godd**n close,” former Trump National Security expert and critic Miles Taylor said.

“It’s scary to watch,” comedian Dave Chapelle said to laughter during Trump’s first administration. 

Taylor thinks it’s not only scary to watch, but he also believes it tells a larger story about Trump. “I’d say the old maxim is true. What do your friends look like? Look in a mirror. What they look like is you,” he said. “So if the president of the United States says our friends are people like Vladimir Putin of Russia and Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, then you need to see, very clearly, he wants to be like them.”

Don’t take anyone’s word for it. Listen to Trump himself. “He’s a great gentleman,” the president said about bin Salman while speaking before the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum on Wednesday. He then went on to praise Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — another authoritarian.

So thank you, Mary Bruce, for asking what we all should ask — and what we should never stop asking about, no matter the personal consequences. This is as serious as it gets. 

In his Oval Office remarks, Trump described Jamal Khashoggi as “extremely controversial” simply because the late journalist advocated for civil rights reforms in his native Saudi Arabia that were promised to the country’s citizens by its leaders. What’s so controversial about that? Not a damn thing. Trump also said of Khashoggi, “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman you’re talking about.” Who didn’t like him? The elite who felt threatened by his questions. Certainly not the common man.

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Trump said “things happen,” when describing Khashoggi’s cold-hearted murder, dismemberment and incineration. Despite the fact that the CIA during his first administration concluded that bin Salman orchestrated the killing, Trump assured us that wasn’t the case. “He knew nothing,” Trump said flatly.

“‘Things happen.’ Just two words. That’s all it took for Donald Trump to effectively dismiss what is probably the most infamous journalist killing of the last decade, and in so doing plumbed a new low in his contempt for journalists, for journalism and for the truth,” said Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

According to Taylor, Trump missed a great opportunity to challenge bin Salman and to bring Saudi Arabia into the 21st century. The crown prince, he said, “is a very young guy who’s likely to be in power for many, many decades. A smart president, a smart tactician, would see that there is an opportunity to stand up for human rights, to stand up for Western values and to say to Saudi Arabia, ‘if you want to be taken seriously in the world, you have to rehabilitate from this egregious crime and you’re going to have to do it through us. We’re the most powerful nation in the world. You’ve just violated these rights that we’ve spent our existence for 249 years as a country defending.’” 

Doing so, Taylor said, would allow the U.S. to “have the Saudis over a barrel, literally and figuratively. It would have given us the thing Donald Trump claims to be good at getting — leverage. But he didn’t do that. He took the easy way out because he thought that was better for him personally.”

Trump also channeled bin Salman when he reacted to a group of military veterans who serve in Congress. This week, they released a PSA reminding military and intelligence personnel that they must refuse to follow any illegal orders. The president, on Truth Social, accused the lawmakers of engaging in “seditious behavior punishable by DEATH.”

He then reposted comments calling them “traitors” and saying they should be jailed or hanged. 

Trump is unraveling. His failures are mounting and frightening the rest of the world, giving our closest allies cause for concern. 

Jim Richards, a broadcaster on News Talk 1010 in Toronto, said that Canada may be forced to reassess its relationship with the United States. “America isn’t viewed the way it was before, under Bush, Reagan or Biden, as this beacon to the rest of the world. Now it’s like who is going to step up? Is it the EU? What has happened to America?”

Trump did. He is the first president to take a personal hand in prosecuting his enemies; he cares little about due process or the rule of law. Students of history will note that one of the reasons why the American colonies became the United States was because colonists got tired of King George III arbitrarily prosecuting those who disagreed with him.

Speaking of which, the United Kingdom is also reassessing its relationship with Trump’s America. “The world is safer when our closest friends are democracies,” Taylor said. “And our best friend, [our partner in] what we call ‘the special relationship,’ did something unprecedented last week. They stopped sharing intelligence with the United States because they think what we’re doing in the Caribbean, bombing drug boats, is illegal.” 

On Thursday during her weekly briefing, White House Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about some of these recent events. She didn’t stay long enough to address them all. But she did talk about Trump calling a female reporter “piggy.” 

“Look, the president is very frank and honest,” she said. “It is one of the many reasons he was re-elected. He gets frustrated when you all lie about him and spread fake news about him.”

Leavitt never addressed the inherent misogyny of Trump’s comment, and she never discussed the mountain of lies we have to correct from him on a daily basis, including but not limited to gas and egg prices, the economy, immigration, the 2020 election and his claims of a 2024 “landslide” victory. Her summation, in fact, ended with a lie. Once again, Leavitt claimed Trump is “the most transparent president in history.” 

She is “vile,” several reporters told me after the press briefing. Of course, another said she was masterful at “spin.” I’ve never seen a more pathetic briefing. Leavitt wouldn’t even support another woman being harassed by a man in a position of power. 

So what do we have left? A president who continues to disrupt the entire world while journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to accurately report the fact that Trump is getting worse. The world sees this, and so do his political opponents. 

After the president threatened Democratic members of Congress, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar released an unprecedented joint statement “unequivocally condemn[ing] Donald Trump’s disgusting and dangerous death threats… We have been in contact with the House Sergeant at Arms and the United States Capitol Police to ensure the safety of these members and their families.”

I have seen a few things covering the White House in the last 40 years. But until this week I’d never seen a president call one female reporter a “piggy,” tell another she’s insubordinate and appear to threaten members of Congress with execution.

Any one of those are unprecedented occurrences. We got three of them in one week courtesy of Donald Trump.

Trump doesn’t care. There’s every indication that he is incapable of any such empathy. He wants to be a dictator like bin Salman, who radiates anger and power with the slickness of a grifter. You can see it in his eyes. 

Trump’s eyes are empty. They are fearful and often angry. He once aspired to be like bin Salman. Now he’s just an angry old man who calls reporters “piggy.”