Even for President Donald Trump, who lobs public insults on a daily basis, this one stood out. During a November 14 gaggle with journalists on Air Force One, Trump tried to silence a reporter asking about the Epstein files: “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy.”
The target of his childish name-calling was Bloomberg News correspondent Catherine Lucey, and she has an Iowa connection.
Lucey covered Iowa politics and the statehouse for the Associated Press from 2013 to 2017. Her scoops included being the first to report that prominent conservative Sam Clovis had stepped down as state chair of former Texas Governor Rick Perry’s presidential campaign in 2015.
She moved to Washington to be one of the AP’s White House reporters at the beginning of Trump’s first term. Her most impactful story may have been getting Trump to answer a question “he’d been dodging for months”: did he know about his personal attorney Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels? Trump said “No,” but that statement turned out to be false.
Lucey stayed on the White House beat as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, beginning in 2019. She covered the 2020 presidential campaign as well as the Trump administration, then remained with the Journal throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, with a focus on “politics, gender and domestic policy issues.”
Lucey joined the Bloomberg News cohort at the White House in March of this year. Announcing the hiring, the company said, “A quick glance at her bylines and newsmaking interviews with President Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and top officials across multiple administrations underscore the depth of her experience and skill in generating exclusives and scoops.”
In other words, the president knew the person he was trying to shut down.
Moments before the insult, another reporter had asked about a recently disclosed email in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that Donald Trump “knew about the girls.” The president tried to deflect by highlighting the sex trafficker’s ties to well-known Democrats. As a third reporter began to change the subject to Venezuela, Lucey interjected with a pertinent follow-up question: “Sir, if there’s nothing incriminating in the files, sir, why not—”
Trump pointed at Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy.”
I’ve cued the video up to the key exchange. If you turn on closed captions, you’ll see that hilariously, the official White House transcript reads, “Quiet. Quiet (inaudible).” Far from being inaudible, the word “Piggy” is easy to make out.
Another journalist with an Iowa connection, former Des Moines Register chief political reporter Jennifer Jacobs (now with CBS News) was first to mention the “Piggy” comment, in an X/Twitter post from November 15 listing newsworthy comments from the gaggle. The disparaging remark drew wider attention days later, when Meredith Kile put “Piggy” in the headline of a story for People magazine about the “tense exchanges” Trump had “with members of the press over the weekend.”
It’s nothing new for Trump to insult reporters, especially women. But this one went more viral than usual, probably because calling someone “Piggy” is behavior one would expect from an immature child, not a head of state.
Trump administration staffers have tried to justify the personal attack in different ways. Jeremy Barr reported for the Guardian on November 18,
Asked for comment about Trump’s insult, a White House official blamed Lucey. “This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane,” the person claimed, offering no evidence for this allegation. “If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.”
When asked what specifically the reporter had done that was inappropriate, the White House did not respond.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt put a favorable spin on the story when a reporter asked on November 20 what Trump had meant by “Piggy.”
“The president is very frank and honest with everyone in this room. You’ve seen it yourself. You’ve all experienced it yourselves. And I think it’s one of the many reasons that the American people re-elected this president, because of his frankness. And he calls out fake news when he sees it. He gets frustrated with reporters when you lie about him, when you spread fake news about him and his administration.”
She added: “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.”
Lucey hasn’t spread lies or “fake news” about Trump, or about anything else. Nor has she commented publicly on the incident. A spokesperson for Bloomberg News told the Guardian, “Our White House journalists perform a vital public service, asking questions without fear or favor. We remain focused on reporting issues of public interest fairly and accurately.”
The White House should be relieved that coverage has focused on Trump’s insult, and not on his utterly unconvincing answer to another question from Lucey on Air Force One. Watch this part of the same gaggle:
My transcript:
Lucey: Mr. President, could you tell us why you needed to get an MRI? I understand that the results were good, but what was it for?
Trump: Because it’s part of my physical. Getting an MRI is very standard. What, you think I shouldn’t have it? Other people got it.
Lucey: No, but typically, an MRI, it’s of a specific part of your body.
Trump: I had an MRI. Here’s what your story is. I had an MRI. The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor. That’s it. But I had an MRI as part of my standard yearly, or every—I think they do it every two years—but I have the physical every year. And the result was outstanding.
Lucey: Was it your brain, or your heart, or—
Trump: I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well. And they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen.
Trump went on to assert that he took “a very advanced test on mental acuity” and “aced it” with “a perfect score.”
As several medical experts have noted, an MRI is not part of a routine physical. Rather, it’s used to screen for a wide range of potential health issues. Moreover, this wasn’t Trump’s “annual” physical—it was at minimum his second physical examination this year.
It’s not credible that Trump didn’t know why he needed advanced diagnostics, or that a doctor said the screening produced “the best result he has ever seen.” Physicians would more commonly tell a patient something along the lines of, “Everything looks normal” or “We didn’t see anything concerning” or “It’s all clear.”
Although Trump’s penchant for lies and exaggerations is old news, we learned something from this interaction. Minutes after the world’s most powerful man sought to humiliate and intimidate her, Catherine Lucey remained professional and persistent, trying three times to find out which part of the president’s body warranted closer medical examination. The White House press corps could use more of that follow-up energy.