President Donald Trump resorted to his tried-and-true technique of name-calling when a female reporter called out his unsubstantiated voter fraud claims.
Trump, 79, fired off another belittling comment toward a female reporter on Wednesday after she asked the president about why the FBI had issued a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to 2020 voter results in Maricopa County, Arizona.
“In Arizona, why did the FBI seize election records in that state?” PBS News Hour White House correspondent Liz Landers asked the president as he departed the White House for Cincinnati, Ohio.
“Well, they probably thought the election was rigged, right?” Trump said.
When Landers replied that the election was not “rigged,” Trump said, “Really? How do you know?
“Your own attorney general in 2020 said that there was no measurable voter fraud,” Landers explained.
“Oh, really? You don’t think it was rigged?” Trump interrupted. “I think it was rigged. And if you say it wasn’t rigged, then you’re a rotten reporter.”
In December 2020, the former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, whom Trump appointed to the role during his first term, said that the Justice Department had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”
Arizona’s Republican governor at the time, Doug Ducey, also said that his state’s election system was secure. “I’ve been pretty outspoken about Arizona’s election system, and bragged about it quite a bit, including in the Oval Office,” he posted on X in November 2020.
Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to former President Joe Biden, who won 306 Electoral College votes and 51.3 percent of the popular vote.
Reached for comment, the White House referred the Daily Beast back to the president’s Wednesday statements.
The Daily Beast reached out to Landers for comment.
Throughout his second administration, Trump has taken his history of misogyny to new levels in his ridiculing of female reporters.
Last month, the president called CNN star anchor Kaitlan Collins “the worst reporter” after she asked him about survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, saying, “CNN has no ratings because of people like you.”
“She’s a young woman. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile,” he said to others in the room. “I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face.”
Days later, he told another female reporter, the Washington Post’s Natalie Allison, that she had a “very bad attitude” after she asked the president about his immigration crackdown.
In November, Trump snapped at Bloomberg’s White House correspondent, Catherine Lucey, on Air Force One after she asked him about Epstein, telling her, “Quiet, piggy!”
