Mary Trump thinks she knows why her uncle keeps unloading on women in the press, and it is not just because he enjoys a fight.
On her show, Mary Trump Media, the president’s niece said she has watched his language toward female reporters turn even nastier in recent weeks, from schoolyard insults to flat out contempt. “His misogynistic attacks against reporters in particular are increasing and that means a couple of things,” she said. “It means that he’s increasingly comfortable lodging such attacks, as he’s been openly misogynistic, as he’s been openly racist and openly Islamophobic and openly anti-immigrant and openly antisemitic. There’s no hiding it anymore.”
Her comments landed after Trump snapped at a female reporter who questioned his attempt to blame the Biden administration for the D.C. National Guard shooting suspect, an Afghan man admitted under a resettlement program. When she pointed out that refugees had been vetted, Trump cut her off. “Are you a stupid person?” he said. “Because they came in on a plane along with thousands of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”
REPORTER: Officials say the suspect in the DC shooting was vetted and it came up clean
TRUMP: He went cuckoo. He went nuts. There was no vetting
REPORTER: Actually, your DOJ IG just reported that there was thorough vetting of Afghans who were brought into the US. So why do you… pic.twitter.com/0SRbdZ6RjU
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 28, 2025
For Mary Trump, episodes like that are not random outbursts, they are a tell. She argued that the sharp rebukes he fires at women who challenge him are a sign of mounting strain in his second term. “I think it’s also a sign that he’s a little rattled,” she said. “He’s also never clearly heard of the Streisand effect. When you call attention to the thing you want people to ignore, it’s probably a terrible idea.”
The Streisand effect, as she explained, is the idea that trying to bury a story often makes it explode instead. By publicly berating high profile women on camera and online, Trump ends up amplifying the very coverage he wants to discredit.
There has been plenty of material to point to over the past two weeks. Trump has called a Bloomberg reporter “Piggy,” branded ABC’s Mary Bruce a “terrible person,” and launched a personal tirade at New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers after she co wrote a story about his energy level and travel schedule.
“The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out,” he wrote on Truth Social, singling her out while ignoring her male co author.
A spokesperson for The New York Times defended Rogers and her colleagues, saying that “expert and thorough reporters like Katie Rogers exemplify how an independent and free press helps the American people better understand their government and its leaders.”
Mary Trump frames the pattern as part of a long-running hostility toward women who question her uncle in public, now cranked up as legal and political pressures close in. To her, the insults are not only about punishing individual reporters, they are about sending a message to anyone who might follow their lead.
What she is really arguing is that the president’s attacks are a kind of barometer. The louder and more personal they get, the more unsettled he is behind the scenes. And with each “stupid person” or “ugly, both inside and out” hurled at women doing their jobs, the list of people willing to say so, including members of his own family, keeps getting longer.
