White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has spoken out about President Donald Trump calling a female reporter “Piggy” and says his behavior shows he is being honest with the media. The moment happened on November 14 when reporter Catherine Lucey asked Trump questions about the Epstein files while on Air Force One.
According to Unliad, Lucey was trying to ask Trump why he would not release certain files about Jeffrey Epstein if there was nothing bad in them. Before she could finish her question, Trump cut her off. He pointed at her and said, “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,” then moved on to talk to other reporters.
During her press briefing, Leavitt tried to explain Trump’s comment in a better light. “Look, the president is very frank & honest with everyone in this room,” she said. “You’ve all seen it yourselves. You’ve all experienced it yourselves. And I think it’s one of the many reasons the American people reelected this president, because of his frankness.” She went on to say Trump is “the most transparent president in history” because he lets reporters ask him questions in the Oval Office almost every day.
The White House thinks insults count as honesty
Leavitt told reporters that Trump gets angry when he sees fake news and when journalists spread lies about him and his work. She said his way of talking straight to reporters is actually better than how things were done before. “I think the president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is frankly a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration, where you had a president who would lie to your face and then didn’t speak to you for weeks,” Leavitt explained.
Before Leavitt’s briefing on Thursday, the White House put out a statement on Wednesday about what happened. They said Lucey “behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane.” The statement also said, “If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.” But the White House did not provide any specific reasons about what Lucey did wrong or why her question was out of line.
Many people criticized Trump after the video went viral online. Journalists and other critics pointed out that Trump has a long history of attacking female reporters when they ask him hard questions. He has called women reporters “nasty,” “crazy,” and other mean names in the past.
Trump’s behavior toward Lucey was not the only time he went after a female journalist that week. A few days later, he got angry at reporter Mary Bruce during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House. When Bruce asked about the Epstein files, Trump called her “a terrible person and a terrible reporter” and said he did not like her attitude.
The Air Force One incident happened around the same time Democrats were releasing papers that linked Trump to Epstein. After all this, the House of Representatives voted 427-1 to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which tells the Justice Department to release documents about Epstein that are not classified. The Senate also passed the bill without anyone voting against it, and it went to Trump’s desk for him to sign.
Published: Nov 21, 2025 12:03 pm