When This Reporter Comes Calling, the White House Insults Go Flying
Journalists court criticism when they fail to ask subjects of their reporting for comment. Shirish Dáte, a White House reporter for the progressive news site HuffPost, appears to have the opposite problem: He gets clobbered when he does reach out.
Top Trump officials, Mr. Dáte said, tend to reply with insults, often bundled with praise for their boss. Never were they more newsworthy than a recent back-and-forth that spread across the internet.
After President Trump said he would meet with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in Budapest, Mr. Dáte (pronounced dah-tay) asked who had recommended the Hungarian capital for a high-stakes meeting.
“Your mom did,” texted Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in an exchange that she later posted online. “Your mom,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, texted moments later, invoking a well-worn maternal insult that, according to the Urban Dictionary, is the “most versatile dis/comeback ever created in the history of your mom.”
Related Knowledge Center: The White House vs. the press
Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
Democracy and politics | Signalgate | The CBS submission | Voiceless America