All The President's Pigs

When Donald Trump called a female reporter 'piggy,' MAGA women rushed in to rationalize the abuse.

Illustration by Riley Levine

No authoritarian leader achieves and maintains power without enablers and enforcers — those who willingly whitewash, normalize, tolerate, and justify the piggish words and deeds of a strongman who uses fear, threats, dehumanization, and denigration to dominate, punish, and silence.

Donald Trump is no different. There are countless examples of Trump’s immediate and aggressive attacks on anyone who dares to cross him. But he reserves his greatest degree of ire and contempt for women who do not show him the deference he believes himself entitled to or, worse still, challenge his authority.

Deference. Submission. Flattery. Unfettered access. Donald Trump’s sense of entitlement when it comes to women and girls is well-documented and might become more so as documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein continue to trickle into public view. Though some who admire and seek to emulate Trump see his treatment of women as evidence of his masculine strength, it seems painfully obvious that it is likely the opposite: a pathological fear of being exposed as weak or lacking in his twisted definition of what makes a man a man. This fear and his resulting desire to diminish and degrade the value and role of women in public and private spaces made him the perfect vessel for the far-right white Christian nationalist movement that is a dominant force in his second term.

The current Trump Administration is dominated by white men. Its policies and goals, spelled out clearly in Project 2025, were primarily crafted by and for the benefit of white Christian nationalist men. For those rolling their eyes that this is yet another commentary attacking men, make note of the previous sentence. Trump 2.0 is designed by and to benefit white Christian nationalist men. There’s really no reason to take offense at that description. White Christian nationalist men make no secret about their belief that women should be subservient and deferential to men, and that there are clear gender-prescribed biblical roles by which we should all be forced to live. The offensive part isn’t calling it out; it’s that this subset of misogynists believes all of humanity should have to submit to their worldview.

But it’s not only men who are the enablers. White women who benefit — or are temporarily benefiting and just don’t realize it’s temporary — are some of the most effective enforcers and whitewashers of Trump’s misogyny. Case in point, Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump’s longest and loudest supporters, has resigned from Congress after being attacked as a traitor by Trump for insisting on the release of the Epstein files. That Trump considers a person a traitor for urging the release of documents connected to a convicted pedophile is an admission that boggles the mind, but we are where we are. I find it nearly impossible to feel sympathy for the long list of people who were confident they were so unique and special that Trump would not turn on them once they were no longer useful.

It might appear to be a flaw in my argument that there are women who support Trump and his back-to-the-bad-old-days movement who are in positions of power. It’s not. These women, and more specifically, white women, are useful tools, so they are praised and put forward as evidence that there’s really nothing to see here. If we’re offended by Trump’s policies, words, or deeds, we’re mistaken. For example, if Trump lashes out at a female reporter and tells her, “Quiet, piggy,” for asking him a question about the release of the Epstein files, it’s not evidence of his hostility toward women. How silly of us to see it that way. She was obviously asking for it.

An unidentified White House official explained Trump’s behavior this way, stating, “This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane. If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.”

For the record, this was Lacey’s question that drew Trump’s ire, “Sir, if there’s nothing incriminating in the files …”

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) attributed Trump’s abusive, degrading comment to him being “a very picturesque and difficult and different type of politician.” I’ll give her “difficult” and “different.” As for “picturesque,” Oxford defines the word as an adjective meaning “visually attractive, especially in a quaint or pretty style,” and I just can’t get on board with that as a description of Trump. In Salazar’s defense, I believe she was trying to say that Trump uses evocative language. If so, she was explaining that Trump was verbally painting a picture for us of a woman as a pig. How that is a defense, I will never understand.

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s chief White House whitewasher, went further and explained that women should be grateful that Trump calls them pigs to their faces, rather than avoiding speaking to them at all.

“So, I think the president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is frankly a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration, when you had a president that lied to your face and then didn’t speak to you for weeks, and hid upstairs and didn’t take your questions,” Leavitt said. “So I think everyone in this room should appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near daily basis.”

This year, as people gather at their Thanksgiving tables and give voice to what they’re thankful for, America’s women can express their gratitude that we have a president who won’t just call us pigs in private; he’ll say it right to our faces.

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