President Donald Trump consistently belittled, interrupted, and mistreated woman reporters at a wide-ranging, mostly inexplicable press conference Wednesday evening.

One woman reporter from Sky News tried to ask a question three times about the optics of calling reports of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh a “con job” by the Democratic party, while the president talked over her all three times.

A female reporter from Sky News has tried THREE times to get out a question about whether Trump is worried about how it looks and how it will affect women to call these sexual assault allegations a "con job" by the Democrats. Trump has talked over her all three times. — Christal Hayes (@Journo_Christal) September 26, 2018

Trump told another woman reporter, Weija Jiang from CBS, to sit down after she pressed him on whether the fact that more than a dozen women have accused him of sexual assault colors his thinking about the women accusing Kavanaugh.

Jiang asked her question, and the president used it to go on a rant about the “fake news.”

“If I could just actually ask my question, Mr. Trump, you didn’t let me ask my question,” she said.

“You’ve been asking a question for ten minutes,” he snapped back.

Jiang responded that, no, she had not been asking a question for ten minutes, but Trump interrupted her, saying, “Please sit down.”

Jiang pressed him again, beginning to ask her question, but she was interrupted.

“Well, it does impact my opinion, you know why? Because I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me. I’m a very famous person, unfortunately,” he said. “I’ve been a famous person for a long time. But I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me, really false charges. I know friends that have had false charges. People want fame, they want money, they want whatever.”


He continued, saying, “So when I see it, I view it differently than somebody sitting home watching television where they say ‘Oh, Judge Kavanaugh, this or that. It’s happened many times. I’ve had many false charges. I had a woman sitting in an airplane and I attacked her while people were coming onto the plane and I have a number one best-seller out. It was a total phony story.”

Earlier Wednesday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also told a woman who asked him about the Kavanaugh accusations at an event to sit down.

“Really, that’s so inappropriate. It is. Please sit down,” Zinke reportedly told the woman. “The nice thing about debate in our country, the nice thing about debate is that it’s never nice to be rude.”

“I’m sorry,” the protester said, before being escorted out of the event, “but I needed to know what you think.”

Trump’s press conference Wednesday took place just hours after a third woman came forward alleging sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh, saying she was gang or “train” raped at a party where Kavanaugh was present.


In a sworn declaration shared by her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, on Wednesday, the woman, Julie Swetnick, said she believed she was drugged at the party and that she had previously become aware of efforts by the boys — Kavanaugh included — “to ‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties… with drugs and/or grain alcohol so as to cause girls to lose their inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No.'” She did not directly implicate Kavanaugh in the rape.

Kavanaugh has been accused by two other women of sexual assault. The first, Christine Blasey Ford, spoke to The Washington Post last week and claimed Kavanaugh attempted to rape her at a party in the early 1980s, when they were both in high school.

Ford, who also goes by “Dr. Blasey” professionally, says Kavanaugh forced himself on her, groped her over her clothes, and tried to pull off her clothing. When she tried to scream, he then covered her mouth with his hand and turned up the music in the room to muffle her cries.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” she said.

A second woman came forward earlier this week. The woman, Deborah Ramirez, told The New Yorker that, at a party in college, Kavanaugh thrust his penis to her face against her wishes.