Watching President Donald Trump tell CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang to “just relax” and “keep your voice down” for doing her job when asking a question at a recent White House press briefing was unbearable. Of course, it’s not the first or the last time we’ve seen Trump harass a reporter. On April 3, he told Jiang she had a “nasty tone.” He has called ABC News’ Jon Karl “a third-rate reporter,” labeled Fox News correspondent Kristin Fisher’s tone “horrid,” and told White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor from PBS NewsHour, a repeat target of his, “Be nice. Don’t be threatening, don’t be threatening. Be nice.” On March 20, relatively early on in the COVID-19 White House briefings, Trump called NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander “a terrible reporter” for asking what Trump would say to Americans who are scared right now. Trump’s verbal abuse of journalists — which he dispenses freely, but most notably to women of color — has become the defining feature of his daily coronavirus briefings, which many in the media agree have essentially become his campaign rallies.

But Trump’s suggestion on Thursday, April 23 that, the medical community look into whether injecting people with disinfectant could help cure the virus finally pushed the issue over the edge, as doctors, journalists, and cleaning product companies all scrambled to make clear to the American people that no, they should not ingest or inject disinfectants. The outcry was followed the next day by a much shorter briefing where no reporter's questions were taken and no weekend briefings scheduled. After originally canceling Monday’s press briefing and suggesting they would now focus more on the economy, the new White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted Monday afternoon that the president would apparently address the nation Monday evening. The White House appears to be waffling on whether to scale back the briefings and what form they'll take moving forward.

It’s worth digging into what got us to this place. Trump insults journalists so regularly it has become par for the course — an integral part of the theater and terror that is his presidency. But no matter how routine it gets, it remains disturbing and even shocking, and it is the press that should be putting an end to these briefings, not the White House.

Over the last month, more and more television networks started cutting away from Trump’s live briefings because there’s a growing consensus they are not just useless but could actually be harmful, mainly serving to spread misinformation and allow Trump to spew hate and nonsense.

But I have yet to see a reporter defend themselves on the most basic, personal level against this verbal abuse in real time. For example, by saying, “Excuse me, Mr. President, do not speak to me that way,” or “Do not insult me.” Reporters at times push back on the issues, repeating their questions to try to hold him accountable. They have also, on occasion, tried to pass the mic back to colleagues who have been cut off after Trump stifles them. And while many media executives have been grappling with if and how to report these pressers, there seems to be little to no debate about the president’s treatment of reporters and how they should, in turn, conduct themselves. There seems to be a tacit expectation for them to just sit there and take it.