President Donald Trump lost his cool with a reporter from conservative news outlet Newsmax on March 23, 2026, cutting off the journalist in the middle of his question, stating he would rather take a question from liberal network CNN. The sharp exchange, something of a surprise given the president’s normally close relationship with Newsmax, took place on the tarmac in West Palm Beach, Florida, as the president took questions concerning the military conflict with Iran.
Newsmax reporter Mike Carter started things off on the wrong foot by citing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s messaging about the Trump Administration’s progress toward bringing the war to an end. “Iran’s foreign ministry is saying you’re not telling the truth when it comes to productive conversations to end the war,” Carter said to the president.
“Well, they’re gonna have to get themselves better public relations people,” Trump fired back with his characteristic bluntness. Carter thought he would press his luck a second time with a follow-up question, asking President Trump, “Mr. President, you deployed ICE agents to American airports today –” And that’s when Trump truly had enough of Carter.
“Who are you with?” Trump asked Carter. “Newsmax, sir,” he replied. Trump then fired off a wicked retort, telling the reporter, “You know, you’re not doing a very good job.” Carter tried to work around the comment, but Trump dismissed him and turned to take a question from a different reporter.
But he still had one last barb to throw. “You’re not doing a good job, did you hear me?” Trump said to the press surrounding him. Continuing by doing his rhetorical questions routine, the president then said, “Can you believe it? I’m taking CNN over Newsmax, can you believe it?”
Video footage of the interaction started to catch major momentum online, with the reaction to his fiery blasting of Carter splitting his supporters. Some supported him shutting down what they saw as a bad line of questioning, while others were surprised to see him lash out at a conservative network.
A little while later, President Trump took another swing at Carter, his feelings of frustration seeming to linger, using the comment to switch topics to complaining about former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, who resigned over Trump’s decision to attack Iran. Kent has been criticizing the president heavily ever since, according to Trending Politics News.
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There was no shortage of responses to the viral clip of the altercation on social media platform X. One user commented, “Newsmax is doing worse now than it did before becoming public. Pretty soon there won’t be a news channel that I’ll watch. X is my news source from here on out.” Another commenter wrote, “Trump said he’s worse than CNN. You know you’re bad when you’re worse than those folks.”
One commenter said, “Classic Trump, doesn’t even need to answer the question, just ends the guy’s career in one sentence. Newsmax better start treating him better or the pink slips are coming.” Another noted that Newsmax has recently been giving airtime to retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who previously worked on twice-failed Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “It looks like he’s trying to rebuild the career he trashed by selling his soul and take some subtle shots at Trump in the process,” the user added.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video