The confrontation between Donald Trump and CNN’s Jim Acosta on Wednesday wasn’t the only dust-up between the President and a reporter during that post-midterm press conference. Clearly, Trump was in a terrible mood and looking to take solace from the previous night’s loss of the House of Representatives on the press, because he also snapped at his long-time adversary April Ryan, snarling “Sit down!” at her and pointing his finger.
Ryan, who is now the Washington Bureau Chief for American Urban Radio Networks, went on ABC’s The View to talk about the exchange with the daytime panel, telling them that it began as a misunderstanding:
There was a moment where the President had finished answering a question, he was finding someone to call on the next time. There was that pregnant moment, that pregnant pause that I lobbed a question in. He responded. And you know what that question was? It was off-mic, it was about voter suppression. And he responded, he responded, ‘Yeah I got voter suppression,’ or something like that. And so I stood up, I thought he was receiving my question and wanted to talk about it.”
The problem is, Trump either wasn’t acknowledging her for a question, but inadvertently partially replied to her, or he changed his mind in the middle of her asking because he didn’t like what the question turned out to be.
And then when he sees me, he says ‘sit down,’ you know, in a very terse tone. I was taken aback.”
Of course, that’s not the first time Trump has told a woman reporter to sit down as though he was their boss. Just a few months ago during the Kavanaugh debacle, Trump told CBS News’ Weijia Jiang to sit down as she attempted to ask a question. Trump has told male reporters the same, including Jake Turx, a Jewish reporter with Ami Magazine, and Jorge Ramos, the legendary anchor from Mexico’s Spanish-language channel Univision.
In fact, when I think about it, all of those journalists have been people of color: Black, Chinese, Jewish, and Mexican. I wonder if there’s some kind of pattern there?
Watch April’s segment on The View here:
Featured image via screen capture
