President Donald Trump, it seems, has been in a grumpy mood.
“I think the license should be taken away from ABC,” Trump told a reporter Tuesday evening, seated beside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “Because your news is so fake, and it’s so wrong.”
Trump added that Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr should “look at” stripping the network’s license because ABC is “97% negative to Trump” and therefore “not credible.”
The confrontation began when an ABC reporter asked Trump why, if he was in favor of Congress voting to release the Epstein files, he wouldn’t just order his administration to release them. (Trump had previously strenuously opposed the files’ release, recanting only after it became clear the House had the votes anyway; the bill’s fate in the Senate is still unclear.) The same reporter had earlier asked Trump about the Trump Organization’s business dealings in Saudi Arabia, and pressed the crown prince directly about Khashoggi’s killing.
Trump bristled immediately. “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” he said, cutting off the question about Khashoggi. When MBS offered a carefully worded response—calling the murder “painful” and saying Saudi Arabia had “improved our system to be sure that nothing [like that] happened”—Trump interjected again, accusing the reporter of trying to “embarrass” his guest. Moments later, he called the journalist a “terrible person.”
