The White House has put ABC on blast one day after President Trump called out a network reporter for being a “terrible person” during an Oval Office press conference.
On Wednesday, the White House posted a timeline of events to their website that claimed the network had a “rich tradition of peddling lies” following Trump’s callout of ABC News chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce, who had pressed him about Jeffrey Epstein only a day ago.
“ABC ‘News’ is not journalism — it’s a Democrat spin operation masquerading as a broadcast network,” the statement reads. “The network’s longstanding commitment to hoaxes, character assassinations and outright fiction targeting only one side of the political aisle is a deliberate deception to wage war on President Trump and the millions of Americans who elected him to multiple terms.”
It continued: “ABC ‘News’ has a long, rich tradition of peddling lies, conspiracies and outright opinion thinly veiled as fact.”
Among the timeline is the $16 million settlement the network made with Trump following George Stephanopoulos’ remarks about the president’s legal cases.
On Tuesday morning, Bruce asked Trump why he’s relying on a House vote to release the Epstein files instead of fast-tracking the release himself. In response, Trump said the journalist was a “terrible person” and that ABC’s license “should be taken away.” Bruce’s Epstein files question followed another viral interaction with Trump, in which she asked the president during his press conference with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“People are wise to your hoax, and ABC, your company, your crappy company is one of the perpetrators,” Trump said. “And I’ll tell you something: I think the license should be taken away from ABC. Because your news is so fake and so wrong. And we have a great commissioner, a chairman who should look at that.”
He continued: “Because I think when you come in and you’re 97% negative to Trump and then Trump wins the election in a landslide, that means obviously that your news is not credible. And you’re not credible as a reporter.”
ABC declined TheWrap’s previous requests for comment on Trump’s remarks toward Bruce.
Although ABC has yet to respond, the Society of Professional Journalists released a statement condemning Trump’s treatment of reporters following his attack on Bruce and yelling “quiet, piggy” to Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey on Air Force One.
“These incidents are not isolated; they are part of an unmistakable pattern of hostility — often directed at women — that undermines the essential role of a free and independent press,” the statement read.
“Journalists are not props at a photo op — they are watchdogs for the public,” SPJ Executive Director Caroline Hendrie added. “When reporters ask hard questions about the murder of a fellow journalist, that is not an embarrassment. What’s embarrassing is a leader trying to silence those questions.”
