A profile in The New York Times says that Shirish Dáte, a White House reporter for HuffPost who goes by the byline S.V. Dáte, "gets clobbered" when he reaches out to the Trump administration for comment.
"Top Trump officials, Mr. Dáte said, tend to reply with insults, often bundled with praise for their boss. Never were they more newsworthy than a recent back-and-forth that spread across the internet," the Times writes.
When Dáte asked the administration who recommended Budapest for the now-canceled meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt now infamously replied, "Your mom did," in a text message that has since gone viral.
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, texted the same reply to him moments later.
“I was kind of like, this is a serious war that’s going on that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians in their homes,” Dáte, also the author of the 2020 book "The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party with Racism and the Rest of Us with Coronavirus", told the Times.
“And then your response is, ‘Your mom?'” he asked.
While the Times notes that Trump and his aides "regularly bad mouth the press," they say that in a White House press room filled with hand-picked acolytes, it's different when it comes to Dáte.
"They show less restraint in their pushback against Mr. Dáte, accentuating his somewhat lonely professional existence — reporting for a progressive publication in a building increasingly populated by right-wing outlets supportive of the current administration," the Times says.
Following the "your mom" texts, Leavitt told Dáte via text that he was a “far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face.”
After reporting on a story about Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Dáte received "an expletive-laden text from Mr. Cheung chiding his physical stature and his masculinity."
“In nine years, have I ever insulted you?” Dáte responded. Cheung then wrote that Mr. Dáte was “being a moron.”
Dáte, who has covered politics for years, including in Florida, says he's never experienced anything like this.
“Things got testy at times with Jeb Bush’s staff,” Dáte said. “But never like this.”
Dáte covered Trump's legal troubles and documented the "sprawling aftermath" of Jan. 6 during the Biden administration, the Times explains.
"That was my choice,” said Dáte, who wrote an opinion piece arguing that "the media scandal of the 2024 presidential campaign related not to coverage of Mr. Biden’s age, but to 'normalizing' coverage of Mr. Trump," the Times says.
Dáte is “alarmed” by Trump "not because he’s a Republican, but rather because his actions 'are breaks from precedent and oftentimes massive shifts in how this president is operating,'" Kevin Robillard, HuffPost’s political editor, told the Times.
HuffPost's editor-in-chief thinks he knows why they go after Dáte.
“Their response to [Dáte] was ridiculous, but it doesn’t bother us,” said Whitney Snyder, HuffPost’s editor in chief. “Maybe he’s gotten under their skin.”
He's also gotten more subscribers. According to a HuffPost spokesperson, following the Leavitt "your mom" incident, "the site received 66 percent more revenue for the program than it does on a typical day, according to a spokeswoman for the site."
Dáte believes that uptick is due to many things.
“I would guess that our core audience does not like Donald Trump for a variety of reasons,” Dáte said, “and I hope my stories have informed them as to why they might oppose him.”