President Donald Trump grew angry at CNN‘s Kristen Holmes during a press briefing at the White House Monday, after she asked whether he had spoken with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
“Quiet,” Trump told Holmes, CNN’s senior White House correspondent, after she asked if Jong-un had asked Trump to curtail U.S. military exercises with South Korea. “You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re faking news!”
In a social media post Sunday, Trump had said that “Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea” and that he would instruct Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!”
Holmes tried to follow up on her question to the president, saying, “I was trying to find out if you had been talking to Kim Jong-un, if he had asked you to scale back on those military exercises.” Trump, talking over her, said: “Be quiet! Be quiet! Be quiet! You’re a fake reporter and you report fake news.”
Meanwhile, the White House lashed out at Holmes because during the same event, she asked Trump for his response to a remark by Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff about one of Trump’s aides. Earlier in the day at a campaign rally, Ossoff said that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar,” referring to Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant. Harp was among the small group of Trump officials who (along with the president) were secretly escorted off the Qatar-donated Air Force One to a smaller military aircraft in Turkey because of a threat from Iran.
Following the exchange in the Oval Office, the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account on X wrote, “.@KristenhCNN is a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession. @POTUS hosts a hero lifeguard in the Oval Office and she uses it as an opportunity to take a cheap shot about one of President Trump’s staffers. These scumbags are the lowest of the low.” The press event Monday at the White House was meant to honor teenage lifeguard Ryder Williams, who rescued a 10-year-old boy off the coast of Santa Cruz, California, last month.
The White House comms team followed that up with this comment: “.@KristenhCNN: Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”
In a statement responding to the White House attacks, CNN said, “Kristen Holmes is one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House. This afternoon, she did her job and asked the President of the United States a tough, relevant, and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people. Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press. We stand firmly behind Kristen and reject these attacks in the strongest possible terms.”