Around this time 11 years ago, Barack Obama held an end-of-year press conference in the White House, just as the Democratic president had done before. This Q&A, however, broke new ground, not by what he said, but rather by whom he called on.
Obama began by fielding a question from Carrie Budoff Brown, who worked for Politico at the time. He then moved on to Cheryl Bolen, the then-White House correspondent for Bloomberg, followed by the Associated Press’ Julie Pace. It was at about this point when some people started noticing that Obama had called on three reporters, and all three were women.
But the Democratic president kept going. In fact, at this press conference, he ended up calling on eight journalists, all of whom were women.
This wasn’t a coincidence. “The fact is, there are many women from a variety of news organizations who day in and day out do the hard work of covering the president of the United States,” then-White House press secretary Josh Earnest said after the event. “As the questioner list started to come together, we realized that we had a unique opportunity to highlight that fact at the president’s closely watched, end-of-the-year news conference.”
That was in December 2014. In December 2025, Donald Trump is also breaking new ground with his interactions with the women who cover his White House, although the Republican incumbent is making a very different kind of point. The Hill reported:
President Trump on Monday lashed out at an ABC News reporter after she pressed him on his comments about controversial military strikes on alleged drug boats, marking the latest instance in recent weeks of the president criticizing a female journalist.
ABC’s Rachel Scott did not deserve a presidential tantrum. She reminded Trump about his own position from five days earlier regarding the release of a Pentagon video of a second strike that targeted the survivors of a Sept. 2 assault on a civilian boat in international waters. The president pretended he didn’t say what everyone had already heard him say, before lashing out the ABC correspondent who asked a perfectly reasonable question.
“You’re the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place,” Trump said. “Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious, a terrible, actually, a terrible reporter.”
The harangue was ugly and unnecessary, but it was also familiar. Consider the list from the past few weeks.
Nov. 14: En route to Florida for his latest golf weekend, Trump fielded a few questions from reporters on Air Force One, and a Bloomberg journalist took the opportunity to ask about one of the Jeffrey Epstein emails. When she tried to ask a follow-up question, the president snapped, “Quiet, piggy.”
Nov. 18: When Mary Bruce, ABC News’ chief White House correspondent, asked Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump whined that the reporter’s question might “embarrass” his “guest,” seemingly unaware of the fact that it’s not the job of the press to protect the feelings of foreign authoritarians. He went on to describe the question as “insubordinate,” as if journalists were somehow employees of the Saudi royal family, before telling Bruce she’s “terrible.”
Nov. 26: When The New York Times ran an article about the president’s stamina, Trump published an online tantrum that concluded with the Republican saying the reporter who wrote the article “is ugly, both inside and out.”
Nov. 27: Trump told a reporter she was “a stupid person” for asking a question he didn’t like about his asylum policies. Dec. 6: The president slammed CNN’s Kaitlan Collins as “stupid and nasty.” The recent offensive has been jarring in its frequency and intensity, but it’s not exactly new. On the contrary, it’s been a problem for quite a while. Trump remains exactly who he has always appeared to be. He’s the man in the E. Jean Carroll case. He’s the one on the “Access Hollywood” recording. He’s the Republican who suggested some of the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct weren’t attractive enough to assault. He’s the politician who vowed to “protect” women from the White House, “whether the women like it or not.” He’s also the one who struggles to treat the women who cover the White House with some modicum of respect and professionalism. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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