Donald Trump Once Received the Same ‘Piggy’ Insult He Hurled at Reporter

Long before Donald Trump became president, he was on the receiving end of an insult that he would wield nearly four decades later against a reporter.

In the 1980s, the rising real estate tycoon had his sights set on developing a flashy and controversial new complex in New York City’s Upper West Side, which he planned to call “Television City” in hopes that the set of towers would replace Rockefeller Center as NBC’s new headquarters. Trump’s ambitious proposal, widely protested by locals, sought to cement his legacy as a developer by erecting the world’s tallest building.

But Democrat Ed Koch, the city’s well-regarded mayor at the time, wasn’t sold on Trump’s idea, growing particularly sour toward the project when the Queens-born developer asked for significant tax abatements that Koch claimed were “three times” higher than any amount afforded in history.

The mayor insisted that agreeing to the deal would have excessively enriched Trump at the expense of public dollars, though Trump insisted his demands were fair and necessary in order to keep NBC from fleeing New York.

Their disagreement in the spring of 1987 threatened to sink Trump’s high-stakes negotiations, prompting an epic exchange of nasty letters and public comments between the two as Trump tried to bully a famously feisty politician into submission.

Between the written notes and verbal jabs, Trump called Koch a “horrible manager” and “moron” who “can’t hack it anymore” and “should resign from office,” according to archived newspaper articles that documented the showdown.

In a press conference called specifically to gain an edge on Koch in the emerging PR battle, Trump said, ”The City of New York, is suffering, in my opinion, the worst corruption scandals in the history of the city and suffering from totally incompetent management,” according to The New York Times.

Koch, who leaked the scathing letters in a power move of his own, had responded to Trump’s attacks by calling the developer “greedy, greedy, greedy,” and adding, ”If Donald Trump is squealing like a stuck pig, I must have done something right. Common sense does not allow me to give away the city’s treasury to Donald Trump.”

Though Koch at one point paused to reflect on the feud — saying, “Donald Trump has engaged in invective, but I have no intention of letting this degenerate into a barnyard kind of contest” — the mayor was also the one who delivered perhaps the most humiliating blow.

In one sharp moment amid the back and forth, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Koch referred to his rival as “piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy Donald Trump.”

Trump’s negotiations with NBC and the city ultimately fell through, and he was forced to abandon his dream to build the world’s highest tower. After several years of setbacks and modifications, he started construction on a much more modest project in the neighborhood that was largely residential.

Koch left office in 1989, and died in 2013, but his cutting insults during their most visible battle seemingly stuck with Trump.

Nearly four decades later, Trump is handily the most powerful man in the world, in large part to a political strategy that relied heavily on name-calling against those who challenged him.

Though he has long targeted journalists with shrugs of “fake news” and personal insults, he managed to stun the internet with one of his most recent outbursts, toward Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey, aboard Air Force One.

When Lucey asked a topical question on Nov. 14 about Trump’s former ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the 79-year-old president briefly channeled Koch to utter one of the most shocking lines from a commander-in-chief: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” he snapped, with a finger pointing squarely in her direction.

Following the incident — which caused “quiet, piggy” to trend across social media, prompting countless memes and bewildered reactions — the White House doubled down in defense of the president’s remark.

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

The official did not provide any clarity on what made Lucey’s behavior inappropriate, though a prominent colleague in the White House press corps, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, jumped to Lucey’s defense, saying she does “a great job.”

During a briefing on Nov. 20, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took a question about the “quiet, piggy” comment, chalking it up to Trump’s unorthodox style that made way for his political rise.

“Look, the president is very frank & honest with everyone in this room,” she said. “You’ve all seen it yourselves. You’ve all experienced it yourselves. And I think it’s one of the many reasons the American people reelected this president, because of his frankness.”

Leavitt, 28, claimed that Trump’s directness to people’s faces is “a lot more respectful” than former President Joe Biden‘s approach to media, adding, “I think everyone in this room should appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis.”

The Air Force One moment allegedly wasn’t the only time that Trump called a woman “piggy,” though it’s certainly the most public.

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During Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who won the title at age 19 while Trump was a co-owner of the organization, claimed that Trump threatened to take away her title after she gained weight.

“He was overwhelming, I was so scared of him,” Machado said in Spanish at the time. “He’d yell at me all the time. He’d tell me, ‘You look ugly,’ or ‘You look fat.’ Sometimes he’d ‘play’ with me and say: ‘Hello, Miss Piggy,’ ‘Hello, Miss Housekeeping.’ ”