Trump slams 'angry' women reporters but says hostile exchanges make for good TV: 'It wasn't Donna Reed'
The 50s actress Donna Reed is currently trending on the news because of President Donald J. Trump.
The Oscar-winning Reed, who came to epitomize the ideal housewife of the 1940s and ’50s in roles such as Mary Bailey in 'It’s a Wonderful Life', as well as her hit series 'The Donna Reed Show', was referred to by Trump while talking about contentious exchange with reporters during coronavirus press briefings.
Speaking to the New York Post in a wide-ranging interview that also addressed the return of White House press briefings, the president singled out two CBS News reporters, Weija Jiang and Paula Reid, for their line of questioning that he termed redundant and which he said disrupted the said briefings.
“It wasn’t Donna Reed, I can tell you that," Trump said, describing their behavior at the press conferences. He also called out the journalists' "attitudes" while engaging in the contentious back and forth.
“Paula Reid, she’s sitting there and I say, ‘How angry. I mean, what’s the purpose?’ They’re not even tough questions, but you see the attitude of these people, it’s like incredible," Trump noted.
The president's comments came after Reid grabbed headlines on April 13 for asking Trump what he did in the time he bought after banning travel from China. The commander-in-chief reiterated his response time and course of action upon the arrival of the deadly virus in the United States but sidestepped the answer, and when Reid refused to give up the mic, Trump called her "disgraceful."
On April 19, Jiang repeatedly asked Trump why he didn't warn American citizens about the novel coronavirus sooner than he did. Frustrated by her tone, the president told her to "just relax" and "keep your voice down" before explaining how his administration did the best they could with the information they had at the time
“A lot of people love when the press hits me, you know, when I go at it with the press – they like it,” Trump told The Post, admitting that he, in fact, enjoyed the exchanges with Reid and Jiang. “I have a feeling everybody likes it because, you know, it’s more exciting than sitting there falling asleep.”
Trump said people liked watching him spar with reporters at the White House briefing room - even senior citizens who he was told did not approve of the hostile exchanges.
“I was told that some people didn’t like the combative attitude so much. And I can a little bit understand that. But I would say from the standpoint of watching it and wanting to watch, that would be more interesting than having boring questions asked," he said.
“And you know, at the same time, they shouldn’t be asking the same question every press conference just trying to get a rise, you know," he added.
Trump also shed some light on how soon the White House coronavirus briefings would be resumed.
“You know, we didn’t stop them. I mean, this is breaking, this, but we didn’t stop them. Because we’ll probably do maybe one a week, sometimes two depending on the news, but Kayleigh’s going to be able to do them,” he said.
“We’ll do them. We get a lot of people watching, and it’s the way that you get around fake news,” Trump told the paper. “In other words, I have a much bigger audience than anybody’s ever had.”