CNN reporter balks at Trump's vulgar attack on cabinet member: 'My mother is watching'

One of President Donald Trump's attacks on his own cabinet secretary was so vulgar that a CNN reporter wouldn't read it aloud.

CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel was reading an excerpt from Regime Change, an upcoming book about the second Trump administration by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. She had to stop, however, when getting to a part about what Trump said to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Trump told Lutnick, "You used to be a killer," according to a passage from the book that Gangel read on-air. "I remember when you were 35, you were a killer."

Gangel had to stop as she read a line where Trump told Lutnick, "Now, you're just soft, and you're a p—."

"I'm not going to say that on TV," Gangel said instead. "My mother is watching."

Trump said the expletive twice in the passage, and when it came up again, she told viewers, "You can look at it on TV."

Gangel read the passage to make a point about Trump's vulgarity, per the book. The others on the roundtable with her couldn't help but laugh as she stopped herself from explicitly echoing Trump's vulgarity.

Charles Blow, the author of "Blow the Stack" newsletter, told Gangel that she could have referred to the expletive by saying it's "the thing" that Trump "confessed he likes to grab people by."