This time, CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell — who interviewed Trump for “60 Minutes” in April — was the target.
During that earlier interview, Trump called O’Donnell a “disgrace” over her line of questioning about a note written by the suspected shooter from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Speaking to Hannity during his two-day summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump was asked whether there had been any progress in talks with China on trade, tariffs and intellectual property.
The president began by addressing the question.
But he quickly pivoted to an attack on O’Donnell.
“Yeah, I mean, it is progress, but I also tell people that, you know, I was in an interview with a very bad, you know, stupid reporter. She works for CBS. You saw that ’60 Minutes.’ Stupid person. Just an average person. You could take anybody off the street, and it’d be as good as she is. You know, just, very average.”
Hannity smiled and appeared to try to suppress a laugh.
Trump then explained why he was attacking O’Donnell at that very moment:
“And she asked me a question. She talked about China, this and that. They steal this and they steal that. I said, ‘We do it to them too, you know? They spy on us,’ I said, ‘we spy on them too, I guess, you know?’ So, some people thought that was cute. Other people said, ‘You don’t have to say that.’ I said, ‘I sort of do.’”
“No, we do things and they do things and that’s the way it is,” he added. “With that being said, I spoke to him very strongly about that and I would like to see it taken care of. But they’ve been doing that for … 50 years.”