Donald Trump’s relationship with the media has long been combative with the president routinely dismissing reporting he does not care for as “fake news,” launching personal attacks on reporters and issuing outright bans for journalists in his orbit.

His latest clash involved an outburst at The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg in the Oval Office Tuesday after taking exception to a line of questioning about whistleblowers exposing government fraud. Feinberg was part of the reporting pool in the room and drew Trump’s ire on multiple occasions. That led Trump to lash out.

“I don’t know who the hell you are, but you better be careful,” the president said, before subsequently calling him a “sick person” and adding: “I actually think there’s something wrong with you.”

The episode was one of Trump’s many battles with the press – here is a look back at his ongoing feud with the people who cover him :

The Independent showdown

Trump attacks directed at The Independent drew rebuke online with commenters noting the president’s attitude.

“Trump seems to be getting increasingly unhinged. He’s a megalomaniac whose power is slipping away, which is a dangerous combination. If the Republicans lose the midterms and he is even more contrained [sic], we could be in for a perilous couple of years as he abuses his executive powers to lash out,” one social media user noted.

Another user questioned what Trump meant in some of his attacks.

“The question is.. What does he mean when he makes the statement ‘You better be careful?’” one Instagram user stated.

While some people were quick to back the president and called it a ‘privilege’ to be in the White House, others defended journalists for doing their jobs by asking questions to the president.

“Well done for standing up to the Bullies,” one wrote. “It is good to see reporters challenging Trump on his lies. It would be funny if every reporter asked the same question if one of them is silenced. I find Vance more irritating because he behaves like a school boy bully who likes to join in when the bully leader has nothing to say except try to silence those who challenge him.”

Insulting female reporters

The president has had multiple clashes with the women of the press corps, notably snapping “Quiet, piggy!” at Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey last year and telling Weijia Jiang of CBS News she would be “incapable” of “acing” a cognitive test as he claimed he had just done.

He has also called Karen Travers of ABC News “very loud,” her colleague Mary Bruce “a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” Katie Rogers of The New York Times “ugly, both inside and out” and asked Nancy Cordes of CBS News: “Are you a stupid person?”

One of his most frequent targets has been Kaitlin Collins of CNN, who he has repeatedly urged to smile more and even called “stupid and nasty.”

Most recently, Trump quite literally swatted away another female reporter’s question about his comments on the prospect of Iran bombing Los Angeles and San Diego and almost blew up at another until he found out she was from the right-leaning Daily Wire, after which he was much more courteous.

Other notable clashes with journalists

In a memorable encounter aboard Air Force One in May this year, Trump called New York Times correspondent David Sanger “treasonous” for asking about what the benefit would be of repeatedly bombing Iran.

“I had a total military victory,” Trump answered testily. “But the fake news, guys like you write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy… I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write, but you and The New York Times and CNN I would say are the worst.”

During his first term, CNN’s then-White House correspondent Jim Acosta had his press credentials revoked after being falsely accused of pushing an intern at a briefing, leading to a disagreement over a doctored video and a short-lived lawsuit before his access was restored.

White House attacks

The White House tends to adopt the same tone as the president both in its briefings and public statements, characterizing the media as unrelentingly hostile to the administration and disingenuously negative in its outlook.

“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media,” spokeswoman Lauren Bis recently told The Independent when asked about the prospect of House Democrats launching new investigations into Trump after the midterms, to give just one example.

Often calling out the Fourth Estate broadly, their attacks can also take a more direct turn, as when White House Communications Director Stephen Cheung reacted to questions about Katie Zacharia’s farewell social media posts by saying: “The Independent breathlessly obsessing over an innocuous photo is a prime example of how much thought rot they are experiencing due to a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has warped any sense of reality in their pea-sized brains.”

Pundits have long warned that Trump’s attacks on the press serve to undermine trust both in the outlets themselves and in the media more generally, potentially weakening its capacity to hold the powerful to account, a very necessary democratic function.

Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic argued recently that the president’s attempts to shoot down all awkward questions also serve to block him off from useful criticism that might give him pause for thought and lead him to make better decisions, rather than simply yielding to his impulses.

Attempts to ban coverage

The president has also attempted to revoke access to networks and outlets he considers unfriendly to his administration, moving in September to “ban” journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House grounds.

“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States,” he huffed on Truth Social when announcing the measure.

The major networks responded by banding together to suspend their shared TV coverage of Trump’s events until the trio were reinstated, an important show of unity.

U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly then ruled that the president must welcome back the three outlets, finding that the ban had likely been unconstitutional. The White House duly did so. That did not stop Politico from being barred from the presidential plane earlier this month.

All of which followed the Associated Press, one of America’s oldest and most respected news wires, being thrown out after refusing to change its style guide to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” in accordance with Trump’s preferences, a restriction it successfully overcame in court.

Billion dollar lawsuits

The president has launched a series of legal challenges against coverage that angered him, notably suing CBS over its editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his 2024 election rival Kamala Harris, The Wall Street Journal over a report about a birthday doodle he allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein and the BBC over a package on the Capitol riot from an episode of Panorama.

Paramount, CBS’s parent company, was criticized after choosing to settle Trump’s complaint for $16 million in July 2025, despite the network’s lawyers describing his arguments as “meritless” in court filings.

In April this year, Florida District Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismissed the president’s $10 billion defamation suit against the Journal over the letter, the existence of which was first reported by the newspaper prior to its being recovered from the Epstein estate by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee as part of their investigation into the late pedophile.

Gayles found that Trump had failed to demonstrate that the article in question was published with “actual malice,” saying he came “nowhere close to this standard.” The president has denied writing the letter and has not formally been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

The $10 billion BBC case is ongoing, with lawyers for the British media corporation most recently asking a federal judge to force Trump to sit for a deposition.