Donald Trump can’t handle the truth — especially when it’s presented by a woman.
A furious president terminated a “Meet the Press” interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker after she pressed him to provide evidence for his false claims that California’s elections are rigged and that “dirty” FBI agents ushered rioters into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
There are few things Trump dislikes more than having his policy contradictions highlighted.
“You’re a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time,” Trump fumed as he pulled off his microphone.
The president rarely ventures beyond a media environment populated by fawning advisers and friendly Fox News interviewers. He surely knew that Welker was not easily bulldozed; in a 2025 interview, he had complained “every question you ask [has] a very negative slant.”
The more recent interview began to go off the rails when Welker asked Trump a simple question: whether his three-month military conflict with Iran violated his campaign promise not to launch any more wars.
She put it plainly: “Did you break that promise to the American people?”
Trump blurted out “no” before she even finished the sentence.
There are few things Trump dislikes more than having his policy contradictions highlighted.
“I didn’t guarantee no war,” he insisted. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”
Welker was undeterred. “But you said it over and over again, Mr. President.”
(Some examples: Aug. 17, 2024: “Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions and we will have prosperity and peace for all.” Sept 18, 2024: “We’re not going to have war in the Middle East.” Oct. 26, 2024: “I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending foreign war.”)
Trump fumed: “I know you, you’re a big liberal, a big progressive.” Welker replied, “No, I’m just a journalist.”
Then, in a rambling filibuster that stretched on for dozens of sentences, Trump started arguing about definitions. “This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”
There is another long-standing pattern that Trump’s outsize reaction also fits: He has often responded with particular venom when tough questions come from women. Trump’s defenders say he’s an equal-opportunity offender — after all, he called Jim Acosta a “rude, terrible person” and Don Lemon “the dumbest man on television” — and he regularly denounces what he calls “fake news.” But Trump especially dislikes tough questions from women.
In 2020, Trump abruptly ended an interview with Lesley Stahl of CBS News after accusing her of asking tough questions of him while lobbing softballs at his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
“I saw your interview with Joe, the interview with Joe Biden,” he sputtered.
“I never did a Joe Biden interview,” she replied.
Trump insisted he had seen one and then called it quits. “I think we have enough of an interview here,” he said. “Okay that’s enough. Let’s go.”
In one of the 2015 Republican primary debates, Megyn Kelly, then with Fox News, asked a question composed almost entirely of Trump’s own words.
“You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ … Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?”
Trump was furious — and spent months denouncing Kelly as a“third-rate reporter,” “sick,” “overrated” and “crazy.” In a call-in interview, he jabbed, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever …”
(After being criticized for what was widely — and rightly — interpreted as a misogynistic comment, Trump later insisted he had been referring to Kelly’s “nose” or “maybe her ears.”)
Kelly, in a later interview with Trump, described it as “a tough question about women using only the words that you had used.”
In Trump’s view, that was a cardinal sin. His reactions show time and again he doesn’t like to be reminded of his past statements or positions — especially when they are read back to him by a journalist.
“She gave me a really phony question,” Trump told “Meet the Press” in 2016. “It was a setup question. It wasn’t even a question, it was a statement. It was inappropriate.”
That’s the common thread running through Trump’s clashes with Welker, Stahl and Kelly. None of the journalists expressed an opinion. None was engaging in a partisan attack. Each simply confronted Trump with facts, statements or promises he himself had made.
The issue isn’t that Trump objects merely to tough questions. He objects to questions that force him to answer for his own words.
Glenn Kessler
Glenn Kessler was a journalist at The Washington Post for nearly 28 years, most recently writing The Fact Checker column. He is chief content officer at Sourcebase.ai and writes at https://glennkessler.substack.com.