One day after President Donald Trump repeatedly called CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes “stupid” for fact-checking him to his face, the White House has lashed out at another female reporter.
The White House’s Rapid Response team responded to a post on X from Kate Bennett, a former White House correspondent for CNN and a biographer of first lady Melania Trump, with an unprompted barb.
Bennett wrote, “You know, everyone keeps writing these stories about how President Trump is only insulting female reporters by calling them piggy, ugly, stupid etc. But, it’s actually because the women are the ones asking all the tough questions. Give that a thought.”
“Give this a thought,” the Rapid Response team replied. “How big of a scumbag you must be to have been fired from CNN of all places.”
Bennett, the author of the Melania biography, Free, Melania: The Unauthorized Biography, was not fired from CNN. In January 2023, she announced on Instagram that she was switching careers from journalism to strategic communications, and she now serves as the vice president of brand strategy and external affairs at the government communications firm Invariant.
“As many of you know, I quit my gig at CNN at the end of this last contract,” she wrote. “A very difficult decision, but one that came with several months of thought, exploration and a feeling in my gut that it is time to try something new.”
Trump and his orbit’s denigration of women is nothing new. The president had a long-standing beef with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, whom he once called “nasty” and “not very sharp.”
“There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” Trump said, referring to her questions for him during a 2016 debate.
Sentiments between the two seem to have eased since then, given Kelly’s endorsement of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
“He will be a protector of women, and it’s why I’m voting for him,” Kelly said of Trump during a November 2024 campaign rally, despite him previously saying he “doesn’t respect her as a journalist.”
Trump also has a very public beef with comedian Rosie O’Donnell, whose citizenship he has threatened to revoke over her criticism of his presidency and his character.
O’Donnell fled to Ireland with her child following Trump’s election win for his second term, saying she hasn’t regretted her decision at all.
“I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my nonbinary child to leave the country,” she told CNN’s The Situation Room in April. “And although I was not one of the celebrities who announced that that’s what I would do, I made the decision within my family and my therapist should he win.”
