When I covered the White House for Newsday in the 1990s, a running joke among reporters in the briefing room adapted a Winston Churchill quip about democracy: “Covering the White House was the worst beat in Washington, except for the others.”
President Donald Trump’s unhinged attack this week on CNN’s Kristen Holmes, followed by a highly personal attack from a White House social media account, shows that the White House beat really is the worst job in journalism today.
In his second term, Trump has taken his war on journalists to new lows.
Previous presidents got annoyed by media coverage but mostly bit their tongues. In his second term, Trump has taken his war on journalists to new lows.
By my count, Trump has insulted or belittled reporters on more than 50 occasions since he regained the presidency in 2025, flinging insults such as “piggy,” “stupid and nasty,” “deranged” and “treasonous.” During the (rescheduled) White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last month, Trump subjected the audience to a rambling, vitriolic one-hour spiel in which he belittled the media and singled out many reporters in the room by name.
There has been a disturbing evolution in Trump’s language. I scrutinized his statements for years as The Washington Post’s fact-checker. In his first term, Trump mostly attacked the media as “fake news,” with occasional zingers aimed at reporters who annoyed him. Even then, the personal jabs mostly concerned decorum or competence, such as describing someone as “rude.”
In his second term, however, Trump increasingly attacks the journalist as a person simply for asking a question. In doing so, he turns away from the question at hand and makes his perception of the reporter’s body, temperament, intelligence and worthiness the subject.
Trump’s assault on mainstream journalism is not limited to name-calling. He’s filed numerous frivolous lawsuits against news outlets, such as CBS for $10 billion and The New York Times for $15 billion. Some media companies, such as ABC and CBS, have settled, choosing to pay millions of dollars rather than endure the cost and risk of tangling with the president. Last month, Trump’s Justice Department issued subpoenas in a leak investigation seeking the phone and text records not only of journalists but also of their spouses and parents. They were later withdrawn, but his administration’s willingness to try to intimidate was clear. A line had been crossed.
This week, Trump got mad at Holmes because, during a photo opportunity with a young lifeguard, she asked legitimate questions — first about one of his closest aides, who has been in the news, and then about Trump’s unexpected announcement that he wanted to scale back military exercises with South Korea because of his admiration for North Korea’s brutal dictator.
“Quiet, quiet, quiet, you’re very disrespectful in front of this young man, okay?” Trump snapped. “Quiet. Who are you with?”
“I’m with CNN,” Holmes replied.
“Fake news. You’re fake news. … You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re fake news. Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet.”
The White House Rapid Response account on X followed up, calling Holmes a “disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment for her alleged profession.” Her children “will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive,” another post said.
Seriously, this is the White House response to legitimate questions? The lifeguard event was routine presidential theater — and the Trump White House has stocked the press corps with fawning right-wing reporters — but there is no rule that reporters can ask only about the topic at hand.
Unlike leaders in less democratic countries, an American president doesn’t get to decide what questions he’s asked.
In 1997, I traveled with Bill Clinton to Paris, where he proudly announced the signing of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, designed to redefine European security. That same day in May, the Supreme Court ruled that a sitting U.S. president did not have temporary immunity from civil litigation over unofficial acts committed before taking office, opening Clinton to a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones. To Clinton’s dismay, he barely got a question on the NATO agreement.
That day, reporters got the news priorities right. For one thing, Russia never made peace with NATO and is now waging war in Ukraine against a government backed militarily by the alliance. And Clinton’s misleading statements about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky during his deposition in the Paula Jones case led directly to his impeachment in 1998.
Journalism has a point. Unlike leaders in less democratic countries, an American president doesn’t get to decide what questions he’s asked. I’ve sat in plenty of news conferences in which Russian or Saudi reporters asked questions that had been vetted and cleared in advance by their governments. That was faux journalism in service of propaganda.
Disturbingly, in his second term, Trump appears to want stenography and hagiography — and to avoid the valid if difficult questions about his policies that are a hallmark of a vibrant democracy.
The evolution of Trump’s rhetoric about reporters —and the White House’s subsequent attack on Holmes — should be chilling to all Americans. “Fake news” contested a story that a citizen was still free to believe. But “be quiet” contests a citizen’s right to ask the question at all.
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