In an appearance on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper, Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) stepped forward to defend former President Donald Trump following his derogatory comment directed at a female reporter. The incident, which took place aboard Air Force One, saw Trump refer to Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey as “piggy” while she questioned him about his connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Salazar offered a perspective that distinguished Trump’s policies from his personal demeanor. “President Trump is a very picturesque and difficult and different type of politician,” she noted. “But I always say that I look at his policies and not at his personality.” She further remarked, “No one is perfect. Those who are perfect are in heaven,” suggesting a level of tolerance for human imperfections in political figures.

The White House attempted to downplay the backlash following Trump’s comment, with an official statement to The Hill on Wednesday dismissing the criticism surrounding the incident. This type of defense highlights the ongoing debates about the balance between a public figure’s conduct and their political agenda.

On Friday, while Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey was questioning the president about his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump said, “quiet, quiet piggy.”

A White House official brushed off criticism around the president’s remark in a statement to The Hill on Wednesday.

“This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane,” the official wrote. “If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.”

In emails released by the House Oversight Committee last week, Epstein invoked Trump in numerous messages to associates prior to his July 2019 death, which was ruled a suicide. 

One email from January 2019 shows Epstein telling columnist Michael Wolff that “of course [the president] knew about the girls as he asked [Ghislaine Maxwell] to stop.”

In another message from April 2011, Epstein tells Maxwell — his co-conspirator who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence — that Trump is the “dog that hasn’t barked” and “spent hours at my house” with a victim of the disgraced financier’s alleged sex-trafficking ring.

Democrats redacted the victim’s name, but the files released by the GOP-controlled committee indicate that it was Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year. In July, the president said that Epstein “stole” Giuffre from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, prompting questions from the late victim’s family.

Trump’s remarks to Lucey, as well as his Tuesday exchange with ABC News chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce, drew widespread condemnation from the two reporters’ colleagues. 

During the president’s Oval Office meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Bruce asked Trump if it is appropriate for his family to do business in Saudi Arabia while he is in office, and questioned the de-facto Saudi leader regarding his role in the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and ties to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York. 

“Fake news. ABC [is] fake news. One of the worst in the business,” the president said.

After Bruce pressed Trump about Congress voting to release files related to Epstein, the president called her a “terrible person and a terrible reporter” and said that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should revoke her network’s broadcast license.

Tapper later called the president’s comments to Lucey “disgusting and completely unacceptable” in a post on social platform X.

The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, meanwhile, wrote in a post online that Trump “continues to behave in ways that not a single parent I know would tolerate from their elementary-school-aged kids.”

Kaitlan Collins, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, defended Lucey and Bruce in a post on X, saying they “both do a great job.”