“In an interview on Monday with the New York Post, President Donald Trump was asked about his contentious relationship with the media — particularly CBS News’ Paula Reid. Here’s how he responded:
‘It wasn’t Donna Reed, I can tell you that. … Paula Reid, she’s sitting there and I say, ‘How angry. I mean, What’s the purpose?’ They’re not even tough questions, but you see the attitude of these people, it’s like incredible.”
CNN
The septuagenarian president’s cultural references predate the hip hop generation and sometimes even the rock and roll generation. Trump’s campaign slogan in 2016 was “Make America Great Again” and in the midst of the race The New York Times asked him when the last time he believed America was great, and he answered:
“I would say during the 1940s and the late ’40s and ’50s we started getting, we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do, yeah around that period.”
Trump believes the golden age of America was the 50’s when our country was demographically and culturally homogeneous. On the silver screen all of the matinee idols were white and on the small screen all of the programs featured all-white casts.
Paula Reid famously clashed with the stable genius a couple of times during the White House coronavirus task force briefings and she is still living rent free in his mind. Trump unfavorably compared Reid to the iconic TV star who played housewife Donna Stone on “The Donna Reed Show” that ran on ABC from 1958-1966.
You are correct Trump, Paula Reid is no Donna Reid or June Cleaver, she’s more like a Roseanne Conner or Murphy Brown. Reid isn’t going to just look pretty and stylish like Donna Reed and remain quiet in deference to her male colleagues. Like the fictional investigative journalist Murphy Brown, she’s going to ask you hard and probing questions.
I will end this essay with Reid’s tweet in response to Trump’s insult:
President Trump tells @nypost I am nothing like 50’s American archetypal mom Donna Reed. Fact-check: True.