Rachel Leingang of the Guardian writes:
It’s one
outrage in days full of outrageous material.
“Quiet,
piggy,” Donald Trump told
a female reporter in a press gaggle, pointing his finger at her
angrily.
It wasn’t
the first time – not even the hundredth time – the US president has attacked
the media. And it’s hard for any storyline to break through the
administration’s “flood the zone” strategy, much less one like this. Nothing
seems to stick. But the “quiet, piggy” clip has taken off, several days after
the admonishment occurred on Air Force One last Friday, and without much help
from the media itself.
“I don’t
know why the ‘Piggy’ thing is bothering me so much,” wrote Hank Green, a
YouTuber and author. “It’s one more unforgivable thing in a list of 20,000
unforgivable things, but I’ve been mad about it for like 12 straight hours.”
Trump is
going through a string of losses: Democrats dominating in off-year elections,
having to reverse course on the Epstein files, Republicans refusing to get rid
of the filibuster to end the shutdown, a faltering economy. There’s a
possibility that he’s losing his air of impenetrability, and his grip on the
right could maybe, just maybe, be loosening.
The anger
he displayed in the clip could be a sign of someone on the back foot,
overreacting to a question Bloomberg correspondent Catherine Lucey was asking
about why Trump was fighting against releasing the Epstein files “if there’s
nothing incriminating in the files”. The files related to the child sexual
abuser released so far by Congress show that Epstein communicated regularly,
and derogatorily, about women with a host of prominent friends.
Lashing
out at a female reporter with a derogatory insult amid a news cycle dominated
by politicians splitting hairs over a man who ran a sex-trafficking outfit – it
was pretty on the nose.
But the
clip also pinged around the internet in the same news cycle as Trump telling
another female reporter it was rude to ask Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed
bin Salman about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist whom the CIA
determined was killed at the direction of the crown prince.
“You’re
mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” Trump said of Khashoggi,
responding to a question from ABC News’s Mary Bruce. “A lot of people didn’t
like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him, or didn’t
like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at
that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
The
combined force of two outbursts at female journalists in a single news cycle –
for asking about a child sexual abuser and a murdered colleague – went beyond
the standard-fare Trumpian attacks on the media.
Part of
the collective ire could be that no one in the press gaggle jumped to Lucey’s
defense in the video, underlining that those attacked by Trump often stand
alone while others fear becoming next on his list; the media backbone that
stiffened in his first term has wilted, under exhaustion and at the hands of
Trump-friendly owners, in his second. The condemnations of Trump and accolades
for both journalists came after the fact.
“These
incidents are not isolated; they are part of an unmistakable pattern of
hostility – often directed at women – that undermines the essential role of a
free and independent press,” the Society of Professional Journalists said in
a statement Wednesday.
The White
House, meanwhile, has doubled down on the comment, saying Lucey had “behaved in
an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane”,
providing no details on what that meant. “If you’re going to give it, you have
to be able to take,” they said.
Beyond the
clip’s power to outrage, though, is a sign that the leftwing media ecosystem
and its creators are starting to command attention and elevate stories that
media outlets aren’t jumping on. As Democratic digital strategist Parker Butler
pointed out on X, the “quiet, piggy” clip grabbed millions of views on online
accounts four days after it happened, saying: “It got almost NO coverage when
he said it … A viral post can shape an entire news cycle.”
And some
Democrats who’ve taken the strategy of being Trump back to Trump, including
California governor Gavin Newsom’s
press office, are using the clip to bully the president back, Photoshopping
Trump’s face onto pigs and repeatedly tweeting “quiet, piggy”.
In Trump
2.0, you never know which affronts to decency will stick in people’s minds.
This one, though, has a symbolism that seems to be resonating.
“Portland
has reclaimed the frog as a symbol of its resistance to Trump’s efforts to
militarize the city,” former US attorney and commentator Joyce Alene wrote on
X. “Perhaps women should claim the glamorous, sassy Muppet Miss Piggy, a known
diva with a fierce karate chop, as their own symbol.”
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