Donald Trump lashed out at a US reporter during a heated White House meeting after he questioned the president about a controversial $400 million gift from Qatar.
The 78-year-old has been criticised on a number of occasions for his blunt responses to journalists since he returned to the Oval Office at the beginning of the year, following his victory over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
On social media, many accused the president of 'word salad' after he blamed former POTUS Joe Biden for the dip in the US economy, having previously taken credit for the same thing when it improved.
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Weirdly, he was in a better mood after he was cold-called by two reporters who he'd previously called out on social media, telling them he 'ruled the world'.
However, he's clearly in a feistier mood this week, after telling another reporter to 'get yourself a real job' in a now viral clip, but that was pale in comparison to his comments towards NBC News reporter Peter Alexander during yesterday's meeting with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa.
After a discussion in which he showed his counterpart a video of some of the 'alleged white genocide' taking place in South Africa, he welcomed questions from journalists around the room - but took particular issue with a slightly off-topic query from Alexander.
The US reporter opted to ask about the luxurious $400 million jet the Pentagon accepted as a gift from Qatar just moments after the video finished, and Trump clearly didn't think it was relevant.
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He responded to the NBC reporter: "Why are you talking about that? What are you asking that for? You know, you oughta get out of here.
“What does this have to do with the Qatar jet? They’re giving the United States Air Force a jet. Okay? And it’s a great thing.”
But that wasn't enough for Trump, who then decided to continue dodging the question by insulting the reporter's intelligence instead.
He added: "You are a real – you know, you’re a terrible person. Number one, you don’t have what it takes to be a reporter. You’re not smart enough." Given Alexander has been covering the White House and the president for the past 13 years, which obviously includes Trump's first term, the reporter would probably disagree.
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Trump continued: "You ought to go back to your studio at NBC because, [Comcast Chairman] Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they ought to be investigated. They are so terrible the way they run that network.”
Finally, he silenced Alexander when he tried to ask about Ramaphosa and the genocide his country was being accused of, saying 'quiet quiet', before moving onto the next reporter's question.
However, the president wasn't quite finished there as when he and Ramaphosa responded to a question about the allegations of genocide in South Africa, he pointed back to Alexander and said: "If the news wasn’t fake, like NBC, which is fake news… if they weren’t fake news like this jerk that we have here."
He went on: “There are all white farmers being buried and he asks about a jet that was given. You oughta be ashamed of yourself. You are so bad, you’re such a bad reporter.
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"So why did they give us a plane to the United States Air Force? That’s what that idiot [Alexander] talks about after viewing a thing where thousands of people are dead."
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News
James Moorhouse