An Oval Office ceremony on August 17 honoring a teenage lifeguard escalated into another confrontation between President Donald Trump and the media when he ordered CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes to “be quiet.”
Per what Variety reported, Holmes was pressing Trump on North Korea, and while this is hardly the first time he’s lost his temper during a press conference, it’s what came after that is making the headlines. The administration didn’t let it go, and an official X account published two posts attacking the correspondent personally and dragging her children into it.
The day before the event, Trump had written on Truth Social that he would direct Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to reduce joint military exercises with South Korea.
Holmes asked whether Kim Jung Un had requested that reduction, but Trump ignored the question and turned instead to Ryder Williams, the 16-year-old California State Parks lifeguard being honored for saving 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai at a Santa Cruz beach. (via CBS News)
He asked Williams whether he found Holmes disrespectful, then followed that up by asking which outlet she worked for. When she answered, he replied, “Fake news,” and called her “a loud, boisterous person.” (per TheWrap) When she attempted to get through again, he talked over her. “Be quiet! Be quiet!” He said repeatedly. “You’re a fake reporter and you report fake news.”
That wasn’t the end of it, because the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account on X then called Holmes “a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession” and labeled White House reporters “the lowest of the low.” A second post told her that her children would one day encounter “your disgusting and inhumane question” and be “sickened and embarrassed.”
Two different questions and two different attacks;
What may have been lost in the noise is that the White House posts and the blowup happened over two separate exchanges.
The “disgusting and inhumane” charge came after Holmes asked Trump, in the same event, to answer a line from Sen. Jon Ossoff. She quoted the senator almost verbatim: that Trump would rather travel with executive assistant Natalie Harp and build a ballroom than do the job.
Trump answered it on the spot, comparing Ossoff to Pee-wee Herman. So, while the Oval Office outburst came over Kim Jong Un, the social media attack on Holmes came over a quotation of a sitting U.S. senator.
CNN has pushed back in a statement, calling Holmes “one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House” and describing personal attacks on reporters as “beneath the office.”
Published: Aug 18, 2026 08:10 am