On Nov. 14, 2025, aboard Air Drive One, the President of the USA pointed at Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey and snapped, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” Why? She had the audacity to ask him a reliable query in regards to the Epstein recordsdata.
Days later, as an alternative of apologizing, the White Home defended him and implied that she in some way introduced it on herself — that she was “inappropriate” and “unprofessional.”
So let’s be clear: Calling a lady “piggy” from essentially the most highly effective workplace on the planet is abuse, not banter.
Suggesting she introduced it on herself is basic abuser logic. And when the “CEO of the free world” behaves this fashion in entrance of cameras, he is not only expressing a private opinion — he’s modeling a sample.
Verbal Abuse and Violence: What Knowledge Truly Reveals
Public well being and domestic-violence analysis has been warning us for years:
The CDC identifies hostility towards girls and attitudes that justify aggression as key threat components for intimate companion violence.
CDC supplies and different IPV analysis word that abuse typically begins with emotional and psychological assaults — name-calling, humiliation, and verbal degradation — which might escalate over time into bodily violence.
Earlier than the shove, there may be the sneer.Earlier than the bruise, there may be the insult.Earlier than the blow, there may be the belittling.
And whereas October’s Home Violence Consciousness Month has simply handed, the deeper concern will not be timing in any respect. It’s the sample. Rudeness is one factor; humiliation is one other.
What the president displayed is similar type of demeaning, belittling language that consultants warn typically mirrors the early levels of emotional abuse. The truth that this occurred so quickly after a nationwide month of training and consciousness solely sharpens the distinction between what we declare to worth and what we tolerate from our highest workplace.
We can not declare to care about home violence after which shrug when the president publicly body-shames a lady and blames her for it.
This Is Additionally About Racism and Energy
On this explicit incident, the reporter seems to be white. However we can not faux this second exists in a vacuum. The identical president has a protracted, documented historical past of calling girls pigs, together with calling Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” and referring to Rosie O’Donnell as a “huge, fats pig.”
And whenever you step again, a broader sample comes into focus:
Ladies who problem him are “nasty,” “fats,” or “now not a ten.”
Ladies of colour who problem him are sometimes hit with each sexist and racialized language.
Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey coined the time period misogynoir to explain precisely this: the mixture of anti-Black racism and misogyny directed at Black girls.
Worldwide analysis on girls journalists confirms that sexism, racism, and different types of hate typically mix collectively in assaults — particularly in opposition to girls of colour.
Stories from the UN Human Rights Workplace, ICFJ, and tutorial research present that:
Ladies journalists face disproportionately excessive ranges of on-line and offline abuse.
Ladies of colour are focused with a mixture of gendered slurs and racist stereotypes.
Those that are most seen and outspoken usually tend to face threats, harassment, and typically offline assaults.
So even when a particular slur isn’t explicitly racial, it sits inside a bigger ecosystem of contempt for girls and particularly for girls of colour. That’s the water we’re swimming in.
When Leaders Discuss Like This, Others Comply with
This isn’t nearly one ugly second. Social science analysis exhibits that when politicians use hateful or demeaning language, hate speech, and harassment improve amongst their supporters.
Research of chief conduct and on-line discourse discover that:
Publicity to derogatory language from elites normalizes prejudice and harassment.
Hate speech can unfold by networks quickly when it’s modeled by these in energy.
In different phrases, when the president calls a lady “piggy,” it doesn’t keep on the aircraft. It travels — into houses, social media feeds, faculty hallways, locker rooms, and workplaces.
If the president can discuss this fashion unchallenged, what stops:
The supervisor who already resents girls on his group?
The boyfriend who already makes use of phrases as weapons?
The teenage boy on-line who thinks humiliation is simply “content material”?
What Are We Educating Our Youngsters?
Physique-shaming will not be politics. It’s emotional violence.
Teen ladies are already navigating brutal pressures — filters, “good” our bodies on Instagram, bullying in group chats. Once they see the president name a lady “piggy” for doing her job, what are we educating them?
That your price is in your waistline.That your dignity is disposable if a strong man decides to entertain himself.That if a person in authority abuses you, individuals will say you introduced it on your self.
And what are we educating our sons if we let this slide?
That actual males dominate and degrade.That energy means by no means having to apologize.That empathy is weak point.
Silence Is Not Impartial. It’s Permission.
That is the half that ought to hang-out us:
When pastors, principals, CEOs, editors, and neighborhood leaders say nothing, their silence seems like approval.
Journalists who fail to talk up when one in all their very own is demeaned assist normalize the abuse of the press.
Political leaders who look the opposite method assist normalize the abuse of girls.
Communities that shrug and say “that’s simply how he talks” assist normalize the abuse of energy itself.
We can not inform girls to report harassment and home violence out of 1 aspect of our mouths, whereas we excuse similar patterns of conduct from essentially the most highly effective man on the planet out of the opposite.
What We Should Do Now
That is the second for all of us — mother and father, grandparents, academics, pastors, coaches, mentors, journalists — to:
Title this conduct for what it’s: abusive, demeaning, and harmful.
Educate our youngsters explicitly that mocking somebody’s physique or humanity is rarely acceptable, irrespective of who does it.
Mannequin a distinct type of power—one rooted in respect, self-control, and braveness, not cruelty.
Communicate up, publicly and privately, when leaders cross these strains. Not simply when it’s politically handy, however when it’s morally needed.
As a result of if the president can name a lady “piggy” and blame her for it, and the nation shrugs, then the issue is larger than one man.
We owe girls higher.
We owe our youngsters higher.
We owe our democracy higher.
Dr. Frances Murphy Draper is CEO and writer of The AFRO-American Newspapers.
