The moderator of Meet the Press has revealed what President Donald Trump told her after his shocking tantrum on the show.
The president, who turns 80 on Sunday, stormed out of a televised interview with Kristen Welker after she questioned him about some of his most enduring and most ridiculous disproved claims. “Let’s call it quits, because I’ve had enough,” the president said, tapping out of the interview.
The president called Welker and her network, NBC, “crooked” before mockingly adding: “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”
But in an interview with Vanity Fair, the 49-year-old revealed that Trump’s follow-up comments were much more genteel.
“I spoke to him the morning after the interview, and without getting into an exact verbatim of what was said, he effectively said, ‘Look, the rain was disruptive. We’re going to do this again in Washington,’” she said.
Welker added that she almost expects insults from a president who has a habit of unloading on female journalists. “I’ve covered President Trump since 2015 when he was a candidate, and it doesn’t faze me at all. It’s part of the conversation. I anticipate it to some extent,” she said.
Welker explained how she deals with Trump’s volatility. “I try to stay focused on the content of my questions and on getting answers. Because that’s my goal, particularly in a presidential interview—to have that amount of time with a president. My goal is to get answers on behalf of the American people,” she said.
During the interview at a barn in Wisconsin, Trump began to sour on Welker after she pointed out in the interview—which aired Sunday—that there’s “no evidence” of rigged elections in the United States.
“Do you have evidence?” she asked after Trump slammed California’s elections as “rigged.”
The president then fired back: “All I have to do is look.”
When Welker replied: “That’s not evidence,” the interview took a turn.
“You’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked, and so is ABC and CBS and CNN, one-sided crooked networks. Let’s call it quits, because I’ve had enough,” Trump raged. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”
As he stormed off, Welker attempted to salvage the interview she had traveled all the way to Wisconsin for. But Trump wasn’t having it.
“I’ve given you enough time,” he said. “You ought to straighten out your press, because you know what, our country can never be great.”
Just days earlier, Trump launched an unprompted attack on CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins after another reporter asked about his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund.
“CNN’s a very corrupt organization, with a corrupt reporter standing right there,” Trump mused, pointing at Collins. “Never smiles. She never—she’s a young, beautiful woman, smiles. I never see a smile on her face. I see her standing with hatred in her eyes.”
Trump also lashed out at Collins and told her to “be quiet” when she noted that Republicans had also condemned the Department of Justice’s slush fund, under which Jan. 6 rioters could have been eligible for payouts.
The president has also ridiculed Collins as “stupid and nasty,” described The New York Times’ Katie Rogers as “ugly, both inside and out,” and shushed a Bloomberg reporter while telling her, “Quiet, piggy.”
