It's Way Past Time for White House Reporters to Stand Up for Their Colleagues When Trump Attacks

White House Correspondents Association... I'm looking at you.

Donald Trump and his cult-like White House staffers once again debased the office of the presidency Monday in yet another shameful attack on the press. This time the reporter under assault was CNN White House Correspondent Kristen Holmes who committed the unspeakable crime of… asking the president of the United States a question.

Trump attacking reporter in the Oval Office.

Holmes pressed Trump for a response to Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff’s stinging remark that the president would rather spend time with his aide, Natalie Harp than do his job. She also challenged Trump on his dangerous betrayal of South Korea. Trump lashed back in a way that feels awfully familiar to yours truly and other reporters who have spent time covering this particular occupant of the Oval Office.

“Quiet, quiet, quiet. You’re very disrespectful,” he said, in typical Trumpian projection. “Fake news, you’re fake news, you’re a loud boisterous person. You’re fake news. Be quiet. Be quiet. You’re a fake reporter and you report fake news.”

Way back in January of 2017, Trump coined the term, “fake news” to describe this reporter during a similar situation - a thin-skinned politician, a press conference, add water, stir. I won’t go over all of that again. Been there. Done that. Wrote a book about it.

And yet, here we are nearly ten years later and rarely do we witness an instance in which another journalist speaks up and simply says, “knock it off Mr. President. Answer the question.” Not one reporter in the room came to Holmes’s defense. Not one.

To make matters worse, the official rapid response X account for the White House sunk to a new low in government social media use by invoking Holmes’s children in a deeply personal attack on the CNN correspondent.

“Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling,” the post read.

A tweet about Holmes's family from the official White House rapid response account

The only people who should be sickened and embarrassed are the staffers who operate this account. It is never acceptable for government employees to go after a reporter’s children in this disgraceful fashion. But, of course, these White House employees work for Trump. As I like to say, it’s another day that ends in Y. So, they will do this again, and again. And again. There is no bottom. There is no worst. Until they finally go and this is all over.

Sadly, perhaps the most regrettable aspect of this episode is the immediate deafening silence coming from the White House Correspondents Association. As of the writing of this post, the WHCA has yet to make a public statement defending one of its own. This is wrong.

I have known Kristen for many years going all the way back to the 2016 campaign. We worked side by side for months covering Trump’s first run for the presidency. She has worked diligently ever since to rise to the job of White House correspondent - one of the plum assignments of any television network. It is obviously unrealistic at this point to expect that the president and his team will treat members of the press with any kind of professional respect, or at the very least, like human beings. But it is not too much to ask that members of the D.C. media establishment rise to the moment and defend their colleagues when they are subjected to the ugliest kinds of personal attacks. I have no doubt that Kristen’s children will be proud of their mom someday.

The real question is… what about the rest of us?