CNBC White House correspondent Megan Cassella reacted after President Donald Trump accused her of asking a "nasty question" because she noted that Wall Street analysts said he "chickens out" on tariffs.
The question arose during a White House event on Wednesday, where Cassella said traders mocked Trump with the acronym TACO, meaning "Trump always chickens out."
"But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question," Trump fired back at the time. "To me, that's the nastiest question."
"Megan, a lot of people probably wonder what it was like posing that question to the president," host Carl Quintanilla told the reporter.
"Carl, it's something that has gone a lot further than I think I, in the moment, really expected. To me, this was something that I had been making the rounds on Wall Street a little bit, been written up," Cassella explained. "And so it felt like it was a chance to ask the president about it directly and to give him a chance really to defend this strategy, asking, you know, what were these analysts missing when they were saying that Trump was chickening out on this?"
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"We've heard him use the nasty question moniker before, not something I was going for when I asked this question," she continued. "But it did sort of touch on this sort of broader question. Has the president been bluffing too much?"
"And now with this court ruling, we do have to wonder what that means for the president's leverage."
