00:10What do you do when the President of the United States calls you crooked, calls you stupid,
00:16and then stands up and walks off the set, live, on a Sunday morning in front of the entire country?
00:22Well, if you're Kristen Welker, you keep a completely straight face and say,
00:27To be fair, I'm not crooked, but let's continue.
00:30That right there? That's the whole story.
00:33But honestly, stick around, because what happened before and after that moment is even wilder.
00:39So here's the setup.
00:40Trump sat down with NBC's Meet the Press, taped last week on a farm in Wisconsin, of all places.
00:46A barn with a metal roof.
00:49And it just so happened to be pouring rain the entire time, banging on that roof.
00:54Which honestly feels like perfect metaphor energy for how the interview went.
00:59Welker came prepared.
01:00She had questions on Iran, on a nearly $1.8 billion fund Trump set up to compensate people
01:07he claims were wrongly prosecuted, including January 6th rioters, on the upcoming midterms,
01:13on rising prices.
01:14Normal interview stuff.
01:16What she got was something else.
01:18Things started to unravel when Trump, without providing any evidence, told Welker he believes
01:25U.S. elections are rigged.
01:27Then he turned his fire on the entire TV news industry.
01:31They're crooked just like you're crooked.
01:33Your press is crooked.
01:34And Meet the Press is crooked.
01:36Welker pushed back calmly.
01:38And then Trump said it.
01:40The line that's going to live on the internet forever.
01:42You're either crooked, or you're stupid.
01:45She didn't flinch.
01:46She told him she wasn't crooked.
01:48And then Trump said,
01:49Let's call it quits, because I've had enough.
01:52And he left.
01:53He actually stood up and walked off the set.
01:56The sitting president of the United States, done with the interview, got up and said,
02:01and I quote,
02:02Thank you, darling.
02:03Have a good time.
02:04That was that.
02:05On the Iran War, which the U.S. and Israel launched on February 28th, Trump denied he'd
02:11ever campaigned on ending foreign wars, even though he did.
02:15He argued the war was necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
02:20And when Welker pressed him on rising gas and fertilizer prices, he essentially told her
02:25to stop asking questions and listen.
02:27Are you ready?
02:28Am I allowed to talk?
02:30His answer on prices?
02:31They'll come down after the war.
02:33That was it.
02:34Here's the thing.
02:36This wasn't random.
02:37This is a pattern, and it's worth calling it out directly.
02:41In November, Trump told Bloomberg's Catherine Lucey, and this is a direct quote,
02:45Quiet, quiet, piggy.
02:54In December, he called ABC's Rachel Scott the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place.
03:17Every single one of those targets is a woman, and in each case, the tactic is the same.
03:22Attack the journalist personally, discredit the question, avoid the answer.
03:27What's notable on Sunday is that Welker, the second woman and first black journalist to
03:32lead Meet the Press, didn't take the bait, not once.
03:36Whether that says more about Trump or about the media's relationship with power is probably
03:41a conversation worth having in the comments.
Comments