Program: Why Trump keeps abusing female journalists

Samantha Hawley: When Donald Trump stormed out of an interview after hurling abuse at the female anchor, it wasn't surprising. He often attacks those who dare to challenge him, particularly female journalists. But why does the US president continually get away with it with little pushback from the press? Today, host of Radio National's Saturday Extra, Nick Bryant, on his encounters with Donald Trump and the changing media landscape in the US. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Nick, why don't we first get a flavour of how Donald Trump has been treating reporters since he returned to the White House? His latest victim was Kristen Welker, the host of NBC's Meet the Press. Just tell me about that.

Nick Bryant: Well, they had a sit down interview in Wisconsin. It was rather bizarre, really, because it was actually staged in a barn that was strewn with household items. And hay bales and the metal roof. It was in the middle of a kind of real massive storm, which which made the interview tempestuous even before it got personally tempestuous.

Kristen Welker, NBC journalist: So as we're having this conversation, we can hear a little bit of rain. A lot of rain.

Donald Trump, US President: No, a lot of rain. Let's just keep going. Let's keep going. Let's power through it, right?

Nick Bryant: But it did. I mean, she went after him when he said and she was absolutely right to do so when he started talking about the big lie about the 2020 presidential election, which he still refuses to accept that that he was defeated in. And then he started making similar allegations about the California primaries that are underway at the moment. And she just said, where's the evidence? Where's the evidence? And that's when the interview started going off the rails.

Donald Trump, US President: ...that's how they move in California. Just like you're crooked. Your press is crooked and Meet the Press is crooked.

Kristen Welker, NBC journalist: To be fair, I'm not crooked. But really, when you play right into their hands,

Donald Trump, US President: You're either crooked or you're stupid.

Nick Bryant: And that's when he decided to to bring it, bring it to an end. Thank you, darling. He said, have a good time. Let's call it quits because I've had enough. And then he he sort of he walked off.

Donald Trump, US President: But Mr. President- you're one sided crooked network. So let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.

Kristen Welker, NBC journalist: Mr. President, let's- Please. I travelled all the way to Wisconsin. I've travelled all this way.

Samantha Hawley: Apparently he stomped on the microphone as well, Nick, on the way out.

Nick Bryant: He stomped on the microphone. Well, you know, that was under his foot. We don't know whether that was deliberate or not. You know, as you know, Sam, sometimes my question is stood on. But yeah, and it's the latest example, Sam, of of of attacks on journalists. And often he goes after after female journalists. And often he is personally insulting. I mean, only the week before it was CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who was the target of his abuse. And it is sexist abuse.

Donald Trump, US President: ...a young, beautiful woman. Never smiles. I never see a smile off her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes.

Nick Bryant: Now, he's gone after her repeatedly. She's a tough and dogged reporter, as as every single person on that White House should be.

Samantha Hawley: Oh, yeah. I mean, he went after Catherine Lucey Bloomberg's White House correspondent. He called her Piggy. I mean, there's so many examples of this.

Nick Bryant: Yeah, quiet, Piggy, he said to her on Air Force One.

Donald Trump, US President: Yeah, Jennifer. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'll be the playlist. Why not? Why are you acting as if... Quiet, Piggy.

Nick Bryant: She was asking a question about Jeffrey Epstein, which he clearly didn't want to answer. Stupid, a disgrace to your country. He has described ABC's Rachel Scott, yet another female reporter. She's also a woman of colour. So is Kristen Welker. And again, maybe there's a pattern there. But yeah, it's it's really ugly stuff. Katie Rogers of The New York Times, ugly both inside and out. Maggie Haberman, one of the most highly respected correspondents of the last sort of 15, 20 years. He calls Maggie Haberman of The New York Times maggot. I mean, this is this is ugly stuff.

Samantha Hawley: Yeah, it sure is. So what's it all about, though? What he just can't control his temper or is there something more behind it? Is there a tactic of some sort going on here? What is it?

Nick Bryant: Well, he loves taking on the press because I think one thing over the years that sort of explains why this kind of billionaire from New York became a working class hero in places like the Rust Belt, these hollowed out communities that Trump has done so well in is because he he kind of thrives on a shared sense of victimhood, that the elites are sneering at you in the same way that they're sneering at me. So when the media goes after him, I think that sort of can be quite hopeful. And this is a playbook that really goes back to Richard Nixon in the in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nixon liked to have a confrontational relationship with the press because he could present himself as the kind of guy that was on the side of middle America and he could present the press as a bunch of kind of East Coast and West Coast elitists. And I think there's a certain amount of that dynamic that Trump goes along with as well. But I think, you know, he also expects the press to be very deferential, I think, and expects the press to sort of trumpet his great achievements rather than doing what the press should do and what the press has always done with his predecessors, which is to to highlight the things that are going wrong. He kind of thrives on an antagonistic relationship as well. But I think in his heart of hearts, he would like a much more sort of a compliant press that is far more sort of adulatory rather than sort of aggressive against him.

Samantha Hawley: Well, Nick, let's consider the response to these attacks by Donald Trump against journalists and perhaps the bigger issue of the changing media landscape in the United States. You, Nick, question why it is that the media colleagues of these journalists who've been abused haven't spoken up against them.

Nick Bryant: Yeah, what amazes me about these attacks, Sam, is not that they happen so frequently. I mean, we've just got used to that. It's actually the failure of fellow journalists to defend their colleagues. I mean, I cannot recall a single occasion when a reporter has called out Donald Trump for his aggression or his his misogyny and quite the opposite. These press availabilities and these press conferences and these press gaggles, they just continue as if if nothing has happened. And I wish, you know, the White House press corps would actually get together beforehand and say, you know, if he does this, why don't we all say something? You know, there's there's a sort of strength in numbers here, but they just don't do that. And I mean, Sam, I get it. I mean, I covered Donald Trump myself. You know, I have a certain amount of lived experience here. I mean, you know, being in a press conference with Donald Trump, I've described as being it's like a monkey with a with a machine gun. You know, there's stuff flying all over the room. There are falsehoods, there are claims, there are extravagant boasts. You know, where do you look? It's so discombobulating. It is so dizzying. I mean, in those moments, they sort of flash by. And and often you kind of go, oh, wait, what? And the moments pass. But this has become so kind of prevalent and such a feature of his relations with the press. And I'm I'm surprised that collectively the White House reporters who do have this group, the White House Correspondents Association, haven't actually sort of thought, how could we respond collectively to this?

Samantha Hawley: Why don't they do that, then? Is it just because it's all just too much at the time? As you say, it's a it's a pretty wild ride when you go to a Trump press conference.

Nick Bryant: Yeah, look, I think there are probably various motivations and reasons why the press don't call him out. I think, you know, traditionally that kind of thing hasn't happened. So it's kind of new, you know. And and I think a lot of journalists sort of adopt what have been sort of normal rules of engagement with an abnormal president. And, you know, the White House press corps isn't monolithic. There are there are news organisations there that are worried about their or their parent companies are worried about their commercial relationship with the federal government and the Trump administration. I mean, I'm thinking there of something like CBS News, which is owned by Paramount Skydance, which has a chairman and CEO, David Ellison, who's very sort of Trump friendly and Trump sympathetic and and a major shareholder in Larry Ellison, his father, who, again, is the co-founder of Oracle, who, again, is very Trump friendly and Trump sympathetic. So, you know, maybe that would have some kind of kind of influence. And there's a kind of paradox here. I mean, the White House press corps is incredibly, intensely competitive. But at the same time, Sam, there is a level of collegiality as well. And so there is a level of cooperation that could be called upon here, Sam, to actually, you know, have a more sort of collective response to Trump's aggression and abuse.

Samantha Hawley: Yeah. And as you allude to, the media landscape is shifting. The billionaire family, the Ellisons, David Ellison is in control now of CBS. We've seen that cause a big stir, haven't we, at 60 Minutes, one of its flagship programs with the firing of key producers of correspondence. Now, the Ellisons are big supporters of Donald Trump. So this is all really quite significant.

Nick Bryant: Yeah. What's happened at CBS is they brought in a new sort of head of news called Bari Weiss. They installed her as the as the editor in chief at CBS. And, you know, one of the reasons they did that was because it was thought that she would be more Trump friendly or certainly not Trump hostile. And as you say, that has caused huge ruptions within CBS, not least within its flagship show. And Scott Pelley, who's a really sort of influential correspondent on that program and a former sort of anchor of CBS Nightly News, he has recently been fired because he has been so critical of her leadership and the appointment of a new executive producer of 60 Minutes. And so that has become a sort of flashpoint. And it's also become more emblematic, Sam, of this feeling that a lot of these big media owners are becoming a lot more fearful of the Trump administration and the coverage of their their TV stations and their newspapers is reflecting that. Another classic example, obviously, is The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos. You know, in the first administration, he was a guy who changed the masthead so it read democracy dies in darkness. And now Jeff Bezos' Washington Post has become a lot more sympathetic, certainly on its opinion pages towards Donald Trump.

Samantha Hawley: And just to note as well, of course, that the Ellisons, they want a lot more. They want to fold Paramount Skydance in with Warner Brothers Discovery, which basically would mean they'd also have control of CNN. So, I mean, what do you think that means for the media landscape in the United States? I mean, CNN is a big network and Donald Trump doesn't like them.

Nick Bryant: Yeah, I mean, CNN has positioned itself during the Trump era as a kind of critic of Donald Trump. I think perhaps in Trump 2.0, they've tried to sort of steer back towards the middle a little bit more. I think there is a lot of concern within CNN about the possibility of Paramount taking over. I mean, the deal has been done in the commercial sense. It needs to actually get regulatory approval now. The thinking is that the Trump administration will just wave that through. I mean, in attacking Caitlin Collins the other day of CNN, he actually sort of raised the specter of her soon being under the purview of Paramount.

Donald Trump, US President: The fake news like CNN, like The New York Times and like others, have abused our people. Wait a minute, be quiet. Have abused our people so badly. It does such false reporting. But now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it out. I doubt it. But it's hard to straighten garbage out.

Nick Bryant: It will curtail, I think, a lot of CNN's journalism and change the character of that news organisation. So we'll see what happens there. But again, Sam, it's this kind of the Trumpification of a lot of sort of major news organisations who we've always looked upon as sort of neutral in presidential politics.

Samantha Hawley: Well, Nick, as you know, it is not always easy to call out the outlandish behaviour of Donald Trump in a press conference. But you argue that now is the time for journalists to stand up, to speak out, because if not now, well then when? And there's a lot at stake.

Nick Bryant: Yeah, it is tough. You know, I always think back to when I first met Donald Trump and I first interviewed Donald Trump. And the relationship with the press was so different back then. This was this was 2014. It was about nine months before he came down the Golden Escalator. I interviewed him Trump Tower. He loved the company of journalists, Sam. I worked for the BBC at the time, and I often joke that it was almost as if he felt the BBC was an offshoot of the royal family. He was so polite. He was polite almost to the point of seriousness. It was hilarious. But obviously, you know, then came the taunts of fake news. Then came the taunts of enemies of the people. And yeah, it is it is difficult to go up against him because he does have this force of personality. He's an intimidating person to be around when he is in that mood. But that's not a reason to sort of shirk the responsibility here, I think, to push back. I mean, I do think journalists should stand up for themselves. And I also think that, you know, maybe journalists should sit down as well. There's this tradition, Sam, of the journalists standing up whenever a president walks in the room. I've always thought that was overly deferential. I always think it creates a dynamic where the journalists are subservient to the head of state. That's why they do it. It's a it's a mark of respect for the office rather than the occupant of the office. But, you know, I wonder whether that sort of tradition needs to be be looked at as well right now.

Samantha Hawley: So the press should stand up, but also Nick sit down, do not stand up when he walks into the room. But what's at stake, really? I mean, if if we just let this behaviour continue, journalists don't challenge it.

Nick Bryant: Sam, I was talking earlier about the problem of of adopting normal rules of engagement when you're faced with an abnormal president. And the danger becomes that you normalise the abnormal. And there's that great maxim, isn't it? I think it actually originated here in Australia. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. And and then the standard you accept becomes the precedent. And others who occupy that office will will adopt the same sort of adversarial relationship with the press. I don't have a problem with adversarial. It's when it gets aggressive and personally abusive. And and I think that steps over a line. And I think journalists have got to kind of try and defend that line in a way that isn't happening at the moment.

Samantha Hawley: Nick Bryant is the host of Radio National's Saturday Extra. You can read his piece, 'White House journalists need to defend their colleagues' on his substack, History Never Ended. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald and Anna John. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.