President Donald Trump continued his recent barrage of attacks against female reporters Wednesday morning, referring to a New York Times journalist as “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out,” after she co-authored an article about the 79-year-old President showing “signs of fatigue” since returning to office in January.
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“The Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding, “The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”
The rebuke comes a day after the Times story, which reported that the President has reduced the number of public events on his schedule and is traveling significantly less within the U.S. this year compared to his first year in office in 2017, as well as pointing to an event earlier this month during which the President appeared to “doze on and off for several seconds.” Trump did not mention Dylan Freeman, the other writer credited on the article, in his post.
The President’s criticism of Rogers adds to other recent public attacks he has made against female journalists. Earlier this month, Trump told Catherine Lucey of Bloomberg News, “Quiet, piggy,” on Air Force One when she asked him about files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s case. Later in November, he berated Mary Bruce of ABC News for a question she asked Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, during Trump’s meeting with the Saudi leader last week.
Bruce asked bin Salman why Americans should trust him after the CIA found that the 2018 assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was approved by bin Salman and carried out by a team of operatives who reported directly to him. (Salman responded by saying, “it’s painful and it’s a huge mistake—and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”)
Trump insisted, despite the CIA’s assessment, that bin Salman “knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.” The President referred to Bruce’s question as “horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.”
Trump has a long history of criticizing the press. The President popularized the term “fake news,” which he has used frequently to refer to unfavorable coverage in mainstream media outlets. Over the past year, he has launched a number of legal complaints against news organizations including CBS News, ABC News, and multiple parties associated with the Wall Street Journal; his lawsuits against CBS and ABC News have since been settled. Trump has also sued the Times on multiple occasions. Two of his previous lawsuits were dismissed. He refiled another, a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the paper and several of its reporters, in October after it was also previously tossed out by a federal judge.
On Wednesday, Trump condemned the Times as a “cheap ‘rag’” in his post following the paper’s story on his health and said that he has “never worked so hard” in his life.
A spokesperson for the Times defended the story, calling it “accurate and built on “first hand reporting of the facts,” in a statement to TIME. “Name-calling and personal insults don’t change that, nor will our journalists hesitate to cover this administration in the face of intimidation tactics like this. Expert and thorough reporters like Katie Rogers exemplify how an independent and free press helps the American people better understand their government and its leaders.”
White House spokeswoman told TIME that “President Trump has never been politically correct, never holds back, and in large part, the American people re-elected him for his transparency.”
“This has nothing to do with gender,” Jackson said in a statement. “It has everything to do with the fact that the President’s and the public’s trust in the media is at all time lows.”