Did U.S. President Donald Trump call Catherine Lucey "a terrible reporter"? Did she call him a "terrible president"? No, none of that is true: Viral posts fabricated the specific quotes. While Trump did make insulting comments toward Lucey, he used different words, and she never publicly said what social media attributed to her.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by @MiaForTrump on June 1, 2026. It opened:
Bloomberg's Catherine Lucey fires back at Trump's 'You're a terrible reporter' with 'You're a terrible president.' She deserves a Pulitzer on the spot. Raise your hand if you agree ✋
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @MiaForTrump on X.)
In the fall of 2025, Trump made insulting comments (archived here) talking to Lucey, who covers the White House for Bloomberg, although he did not use the exact words attributed to him in the post. He addressed a different reporter, ABC's Mary Bruce, when he accused her of being a "terrible reporter."
Google News searches, however, showed no record of either Lucey (archived here) or Bruce (archived here) calling Trump "a terrible president."
The White House website did not show such a transcript (archived here).
Searches across specialized media outlets such as C-SPAN (archived here) and Roll Call (archived here) produced no matches for that phrase, either.
Neither Reuters (archived here) nor the AP (archived here) reported the alleged exchange.
