CNN’s Anderson Cooper Is Baffled by Trump Telling Reporter ‘Quiet, Piggy’
What To Know
- President Trump insulted Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey by calling her ‘piggy,’ prompting widespread criticism after the clip went viral.
- Anderson Cooper and guest Ana Navarro expressed concern over the normalization of such behavior toward journalists.
- The White House defended Trump’s actions by accusing Lucey of unprofessional conduct, though they provided no specific details.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper was almost lost for words on Tuesday night (November 18) as he discussed how President Donald Trump insulted a reporter aboard Air Force One on Friday (November 14).
While taking questions from members of the press on Friday, Trump lobbed an insult at Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey after she asked him about the Epstein files. “Quiet, quiet, piggy,” the President told Lucey as she tried to ask a follow-up question.
Cooper aired the clip on Tuesday’s edition of Anderson Cooper 360° and expressed his bafflement at how this incident wasn’t bigger news. He recalled a similarly insulting moment from “a couple of weeks ago,” where Trump demeaned a female reporter.
“A female reporter was trying to ask him a question, and he was saying to the guy, like… ‘I just like to watch her talk.’ Like, just completely dismissing this person,” Cooper said, per Mediaite.
He continued, “I know DEI is not allowed anymore. And I know diversity and actually treating people with decency and human kindness is not, you know, what’s popular today in some quarters. But I just don’t understand how somebody acts like this time after time, and everyone just pretends like, ‘Oh, that’s just what this guy does.'”
The View‘s Ana Navarro, who was a guest on Cooper’s show, noted, “We’ve grown numb to it.”
Navarro, who has had her own battles with the Trump administration in recent weeks, said “we have to fight that urge to normalize it and get numb to it.”
“I also think that other journalists in the Oval Office, other journalists that are present, when he behaves this way, have to express solidarity with the people that are getting berated,” she added. “Because today it might be ABC, but tomorrow it might be us, or it might be them.”
Trump’s “quiet, piggy” insult initially went unnoticed, but it gained momentum on social media earlier this week. The clip has since gone viral, with several critics sharing their reactions to the insult.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper described Trump’s comments as “disgusting and completely unacceptable” on X, while former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson said it was “disgusting and degrading.”
In a statement to The Guardian, a White House official said of the incident, “This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane. If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.”
They did not provide specifics on what Lucey was meant to have done that was deemed “inappropriate.”
You can watch a clip of the CNN segment here.
Anderson Cooper 360, Weeknights, 8/7 c, CNN
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