President Donald Trump criticized the slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi and defended Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday after an ABC News reporter pressed the foreign leader on the 2018 murder, saying “things happen.”
ABC News chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce pressed bin Salman on the murder during an Oval Office press availability on Tuesday, prompting Trump to interject before she could finish her question. “ABC fake news,” he said. “One of the worst in the business.”
“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Trump added, calling Khashoggi “extremely controversial.” “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it.”
A U.S. intelligence report released in 2021 confirmed that bin Salman approved a plot to murder Khashoggi in 2018. The Saudi leader has denied any connection to the death.
Bin Salman said on Tuesday that Khashoggi’s death was “painful” for Saudi Arabia, claiming the U.S.-based journalist lost his life “for no real purpose.” “We‘ve improved our system to be sure that nothing like that happens,” he said. “We’re doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”
Trump chided Bruce for trying to “embarrass” the Saudi leader, claiming she asked a “horrible” and “insubordinate” question. He later suggested that the Federal Communications Commission investigate whether ABC should lose its broadcast licenses after Bruce asked why Trump doesn’t unilaterally release government files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” he said before railing into “radical left” Democrats that he said should be the focus of a federal investigation related to Epstein.
“You’re not after the radical left because you’re a radical left network,” he added. “But I think the way you ask a question with the anger and the meanness is terrible. You oughta go back and learn how to be a reporter. No more questions for you.”
ABC News declined to comment on Trump’s attacks on Bruce or the suggestion that the network lose its FCC licenses.
Trump has repeatedly tried to separate the Saudi leader from Khashoggi in the years since the 2018 murder, even as he condemned the death itself, in the hopes of maintaining a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia.
In his November 2018 statement on the matter, Trump said the “crime against Jamal Khashoggi was a terrible one” while suggesting bin Salman’s role in the killing remained ambiguous.
“It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said. “That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi.”
Trump later said in 2019 that he was “extremely angry and unhappy about a thing like that taking place,” but he claimed that “nobody has directly pointed a finger” at bin Salman — despite early reports from the CIA and the United Nations already implicating the Saudi Crown Prince in the matter.
