Did CNBC correspondent Megan Cassella tell President Trump "Sir, you are the president, not God" during a press briefing? There is no evidence for that: No news articles make any mention of the quote and neither does CNBC's own website. According to a post from Cassella on X she has been on maternity leave since September 19, 2025.
The viral quote appeared in an image in a Facebook post (archived here) published on December 5, 2025. The text in the image read:
CNBC Correspondent, Megan Cassella landed a one two verbal punch on a stunned Trump during a press briefing.
Her responses to two of his rude outbursts:
"Sir, you are the president, not God."
Then, in response to him demanding she never say that again she replied
"Mr. President I ask questions, not permission.
This is what the image in the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sat Dec 6 15:02:29 2025 UTC)
Such an exchange during a press briefing in front of national or international journalists would be major news, yet at the time of writing a search on Google News for news stories with the quote "Sir, you are the president, not God" does not return any results (archived here). Neither does a Google search for pages on cnbc.com's website with that quote (archived here). Even a direct search of CNBC's website for the phrase does not return any results (archived here).
Cassella herself announced on September 19, 2025 in a post on X (archived here) that she was "signing off" for maternity leave until 2026 so it is unlikely she would have attended any press briefings in the past few months:
👋That's a wrap from me for the year: Signing off today for maternity leave feeling very grateful to be able to dedicate the next few months to figuring out how to raise a baby.
-- Megan Cassella (@mmcassella) September 19, 2025
It'll be a very different type of craziness for me for the next little bit. See you in 2026!
Lead Stories reached out to Megan Cassella via direct message and we will update this story when a reply is received.
