Donald Trump wants female reporters to act more like a meek 1950s television housewife after they pressed him with sharp questions during his now-paused coronavirus task force briefings.

The president in recent weeks seems to have had enough of two CBS News White House reporters, Weijia Jiang and Paula Reid. Be it from their seats in the front few rows of a social distanced James S Brady Briefing Room or in the Oval Office, Mr Trump has jousted with both women over their questions.

Before Ms Weijia has even finished asking her questions, for instance, the president has interrupted by telling her to be "nice" and have an "easy" tone.

And when it comes to Ms Reid, Mr Trump and some of his top aides seem to have almost no patience. She seemed flabbergasted at one late-April evening briefing when she followed up on a Trump statement from minutes earlier -- and he flatly denied having uttered the words she merely read back to him.

"It wasn't Donna Reed, I can tell you that," Mr Trump told the New York Post in an interview, referring to the actress who played Donna Stone, a modest middle-class American housewife on the television show The Donna Reid Show, which ran in the 1950s and 1960s.

"Paula Reid, she's sitting there and I say, 'How angry. I mean, What's the purpose?' They're not even tough questions, but you see the attitude of these people, it's like incredible."

Ms Reid of CBS fired off a tweet in response on Tuesday morning: "President Trump tells @nypost I am nothing like 50's American archetypal mom Donna Reed. Fact-check: True."

And Ms Weijia had her own reaction, also on Twitter: "The president told me to be 'nice and easy' three out of the last four times I asked him a question."

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