Shortly after an appearance in Waco, Texas in March to kick off his 2024 campaign, former President Donald Trump got into an on-flight tiff with an NBC News reporter, according to Vanity Fair.
Trump was aboard his plane in the midst of a press gaggle when NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard began to fire off a series of questions that apparently irked the former president.
"Don't ask me any more questions," Trump said.
Hillyard, however, continued to press the ex-president on the subject of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's probe into Trump's role in payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. An irate Trump grabbed Hillyard's two phones and tossed them aside, a source familiar with the matter told Vanity Fair.
"Get him out of here," Trump said to his aides.
Just a few days later, Trump was indicted in Bragg's investigation and subsequently hit with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Vanity Fair reported that Hillyard's questions were related to Trump's frenetic tirades on Truth Social at the time, as Trump had warned of "potential death and destruction" if he was indicted. Hillyard asked Trump to clarify his "version of events" regarding Bragg's investigation, to which the former president replied, "I don't want to talk to you."
When Hillyard continued, Trump said, "Do you hear me? You're not a nice guy."
Hillyard, undeterred, tried again to elicit a response from Trump, at which point Trump said, "Alright, let's go, get him out of here. Outta here. Outta here."
A voice ostensibly belonging to a Trump campaign aide can be heard in the recording saying, "Vaughn, we're done."
Trump at that point picked up a phone recording the discussion and said, "Whose is this?," before picking up a second phone and repeating his question. When Hillyard said the phones were his, Trump flung the phones away toward the seat next to him. Vanity Fair reported that a thud from one of the phones landing somewhere can be heard on the recording.
The Guardian previously reported that Trump began to unravel when Hillyard asked if he was frustrated.
"I'm not frustrated by it. It's a fake investigation. We did nothing wrong – I told you that. This is fake news, and NBC is one of the worst. Don't ask me any more questions," Trump said. He added that he was in the dark in regards to Bragg's proceedings, saying, "I have no idea what's going to happen" – before deciding that he supposedly knew what would happen anyway and claiming, "They've already dropped the case, from what I understand."
"If anything ever happened with the case, it's a fake case. This is a fake case. They have absolutely nothing. They have it in reverse. They should indict Michael Cohen for all the lies that he told," Trump said, speaking about his former personal attorney who wired $130,000 to Daniels. "They may not do that, but that's what should be happening."
As Vanity Fair noted, Trump's tussle with Hillyard is illustrative of the former president's resentment and outright hostility towards the press. His infamous branding of "fake news" helped stoke the flames of public distrust of the media, specifically more progressive publications. Vanity Fair also added that Trump's campaign team has evidently "reduced mainstream press access" as a result of the Waco incident, with only two reporters from conservative outlets — The Daily Caller and OANN — aboard his plane en route to New Hampshire last week.
"We extended invites to four other mainstream reporters/outlets and they all said they could not due to either [White House Correspondents' Dinner] events that week or because their editors refused," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in an email about the New Hampshire trip. "But we've had a ton of media requests to ride on Trump Force One to the upcoming Iowa rally and we will do our due diligence on who to bring."
