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People on social media are shedding light on the important work by black female reporters after the president called journalist April Ryan a “loser” and insulted a string of other black women this week.
During a press conference on Friday, President Donald Trump targeted Ryan while answering a question about CNN’s Jim Acosta, whose White House credentials were revoked after his heated exchange with Trump on Wednesday.
“The same thing with April Ryan, I watch her get up, I mean, you talk about somebody that’s a loser, she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing,” Trump said.
“She gets publicity and then she gets a pay raise, or she gets a contract with – I think CNN – but she’s very nasty, and she shouldn’t be,” Trump said of Ryan, a 21-year veteran White House reporter.
Ryan has since responded to the president’s remarks.
“Those words are terrible from a sitting United States president, versus someone who has been covering presidents before he came, and probably after he leaves,” she said on CNN.
She also addressed how Trump told her to “sit down” on Wednesday as she attempted to ask questions about voter suppression.
“When I stood up, in his response, he tells me to ‘sit down,’ in a condescending, very ugly matter,” Ryan said. “I am proud to work for CNN, I have been working in this business for 21 years.”
Ryan isn’t the only black female journalist Trump has derided this week.
On Friday, the president lambasted CNN White House correspondent Abby D. Phillip after she questioned him about special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe after the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general.
“What a stupid question that is,” Trump said. “What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot, you ask a lot of stupid questions.”
CNN has since responded in a statement, writing that Phillip, in fact, “asked the most pertinent question of the day.”
On Wednesday, Trump accused Yamiche Alcindor, PBS NewsHour White House correspondent, of asking a “racist question” when she inquired about the public perception that he was “emboldening white nationalists” on the campaign trail.
“That’s such a racist question,” Trump responded.
“I saw someone who I think was very very frustrated and very very angry that I was bringing up the fact that some people think he was emboldening white nationalists,” Alcindor said on “Hardball With Chris Matthews” on Wednesday.
Trump has harshly criticized journalists across the board this week – he called Acosta a “rude, terrible person” and said he was not smart, and he also mocked foreign reporters for their accents. But many on social media pointed out that Trump has a history of questioning black people’s intelligence.
The National Association of Black Journalists, which also called for Acosta’s White House credentials to be reinstated on Thursday, celebrated Ryan, Phillip and Alcindor on Twitter.
NABJ President Sarah Glover called them among the “finest reporters covering the White House.”
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