The White House has defended President Donald Trump after he called a female reporter “piggy”.
Trump was aboard Air Force One on Friday US time, speaking with reporters, CNN video of the incident shows.
Initially asked what Epstein had meant when he said in an email Trump “knew about the girls” the disgraced financier and sex offender’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was recruiting from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
“I know nothing about that. They would have announced a long time ago ,” Trump said.
He then tried to shift focus to Epstein’s associations with prominent Democrat figures including former president Bill Clinton and former treasury secretary Larry Summers.
”Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years,” Trump said.
Another reporter began to ask, “If there’s nothing incriminating in the files sir”, before being brutally cut off.
“Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” Trump said, leaning forward to point at the woman.
When asked about the insult, the White House levelled non-specific accusations at the journalist.
“This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane,” the statement read.
“If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take it.”
At the time, Trump’s opposition to the release of the Epstein files was still his public-facing stance, though later on the weekend he would undergo an about-face and urge Republicans to vote for making them public.
Trump has also pledged to sign off on the file’s release if it passes the House and the Senate.
The journalist’s organisation, Bloomberg, issued a statement in her defence.
“Our White House journalists perform a vital public service, asking questions without fear or favour,” the statement read.
“We remain focused on reporting issues of public interest fairly and accurately.”
His insulting berating of the reporter, meanwhile, has begun to come in for some criticism from the US media.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper posted on X that the insult was “disgusting and completely unacceptable”, while former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson said it was “degrading”.
