President Donald Trump has once again lashed out at the press — this time calling two female reporters “stupid” and “dumb” in a matter of minutes on Tuesday. Experts in political science break down the incident and what they believe it says about his leadership style.

Trump was taking questions from journalists on the White House South Lawn before he departed for his trip to China. When MS NOW reporter Akayla Gardner asked Trump about the rising price of his White House ballroom project, the president responded by calling her a “dumb person.”

“You wanted [Federal Reserve Chair] Jerome Powell fired for cost overruns; how is that different than your ballroom and the reflecting pool?” Gardner had asked.

Trump responded by claiming that the ballroom has doubled in size because “we obviously need that” and that the project is “on budget, under budget and ahead of schedule.”

When Gardner pressed further, saying that projected ballroom costs had doubled, Trump said: “I doubled the size of it, you dumb person ... You are not a smart person.”

Just minutes before, Trump had called another female reporter “stupid” when she asked about the surging U.S. inflation rate. When the reporter asked the president whether his policies are working, noting that he had promised to bring inflation rates down, Trump hit back saying his policies are working “incredibly.”

“If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7%. Now, we had a choice. Let these lunatics have a nuclear weapon — if you want to do that, then you’re a stupid person,” he said, referencing the U.S. and Israel launching a war against Iran on Feb. 28.

“And you happen to be. I mean, I know you very well,” he continued in a jab at the reporter herself. “Anybody that wants them to have a nuclear weapon is a stupid person.”

President Trump to reporter on White House ballroom: "I doubled the size of it you dumb person." pic.twitter.com/Q36R60w66T

The White House defended Trump’s behavior in a statement to HuffPost on Tuesday: “President Trump has never been politically correct, never holds back, and in large part, the American people re-elected him for his transparency,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson.

“This has nothing to do with gender — it has everything to do with the fact that the President’s and the public’s trust in the media is at all-time lows,” Jackson continued.

Trump, though, has a history of attacking and attempting to silence journalists, and he has a documented pattern of spewing venom and below-the-belt insults at female reporters in particular. He has frequently insulted their intelligence and used degrading words like “ugly” and “piggy” to attack their appearance.

Just last week, Trump snapped at ABC News’ Rachel Scott when she asked why he was focusing on making renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as gas prices are soaring.

Trump slammed Scott’s question as “stupid” and called her “one of the worst reporters” and a “horror show.”

Trump is “obviously sexist,” said Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University.

“He doesn’t do this as often to men reporters as he does to women reporters,” Belt told HuffPost. “This is typical bullying behavior that he thinks he can get away with, and for most of his life, he has.”

Belt believes that reporters’ questions about Trump’s projects, like his ballroom, are particularly likely to rile him up.

“The ballroom is incredibly important to Trump, not just because he wants it for special events but also because it shows off his prowess as a developer,” he said. “It gives him something he likes to talk about when he wants to change the subject from less helpful issues, such as the war, the [Jeffrey] Epstein files and other problems.”

“If a reporter criticizes the thing he thinks is unequivocally positive, that is very hurtful to him,” he continued. “Inflation is also harmful to him because he was elected to tame it and he hasn’t done so.”

Unfortunately, Trump’s episodes of snapping at reporters are so common that “they are starting to recede into background noise,” said Jacob Neiheisel, associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

“I suppose that may be part of the point,” he told HuffPost.

As for the questions the reporters posed to the president on Tuesday before he called them “dumb” and “stupid,” Neiheisel emphasized that it’s “perfectly fair to want a robust public conversation about how government monies are spent.”

“As always, I hope that elected officials are willing to engage in a serious way about these issues in general,” he said. “And while the ballroom and the reflecting pool probably don’t enter into most people’s minds on a regular basis, they can easily become symbols of how the administration might be out of touch with the concerns of most Americans.”

Neiheisel said that he believes Trump’s habit of responding to journalists by insulting their intelligence is par for the course.

“That seems to be the brand that he has developed, anyways,” he said. “Some of his supporters like it, and it seems to be a style that is coming from other corners now as well. On a broader level, maybe we’ve just come to a place with our politics that internet trolling behavior is widespread.”

Belt believes that Trump’s behavior shows that he is “abusive.”

“He is using the response style called DARVO (“Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender”) that has been associated by psychologists with the behavior of abusers,” he said.

And Belt believes that this type of behavior coming from a sitting U.S. president should concern the public.

“Doing the work of politics requires calm negotiation and compromise,” he said. “Abusive behavior makes the types of ‘deals’ Trump wants with domestic and foreign leaders more difficult to attain.”

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