For many years now, Donald Trump has been saying awful things to – or about – the female media figures who have the nerve to ask him questions and challenge his falsehoods.

“Quiet, Piggy,” he ordered a Bloomberg reporter, Catherine Lucey, last year in a press gaggle when she pushed him about the release of the Epstein files.

“A corrupt reporter,” he called Kaitlan Collins of CNN, claiming that she had “hatred in her eyes”.

“You’re either crooked or stupid,” he lashed out at Kristen Welker last weekend on NBC’s Meet the Press, before he stormed off in a huff.

Way back in 2015, he even said publicly that the then Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who assertively questioned him during the first Republican debate, had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever”.

Trump is often insulting to male journalists, too, of course, but he seems to have a next-level hatred for women, especially those with a regular on-air presence. (He’s also insulting to print-based female journalists, though it can be less visible; he has frequently, for example, referred on social media to New York Times star reporter Maggie Haberman as “maggot”. She’s been undaunted, but that doesn’t make it anywhere close to acceptable.)

Whether the reason is straight-up misogyny, performative........

© The Guardian