Donald Trump called for ABC to lose its broadcast license after he grew irate at correspondent Mary Bruce after she asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and later asked the president about the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Trump has berated ABC correspondent before and has called for networks to lose their licenses, but this time his anger was directed at Bruce for her questions, or even the way they were asked.
After chiding Bruce for asking a “horrible,” insubordinate” and “just a terrible question,” Trump chided her, “You’re all psyched up. Somebody psyched you over at ABC and they’re going tp psych it. You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter.”
He later accused ABC of being “one of the perpetrators” of a Democratic hoax over Epstein.
“I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong, and we have a great commissioner, the chairman, who should look at that.” Trump was reffering to his FCC chairman, Brendan Carr.
Earlier, Bruce had asked Trump whether it was a “conflict of interest” for his family to be doing business with Saudi Arabia while he is president. Then, she asked, “Your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you?”
Trump asked Bruce who she was, then called ABC News “fake news” and “one of the worst in the business.”
“I have nothing to do with the family business. .. What my family does is gine. They do business all over. They’ve done very little with Saudi Arabia. Actually, they could, I’m sure they could do a lot. And anything they’ve done, it’s been very good. That’s what we’ve done. We’ve built a tremendous business. …I’ve decied to leave that success behind and make America very successful.”
He then addressed Bruce’s question about the Saudi prince. “He’s done a phenomenal job.”
Referring to Khashoggi, he said, “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”
Then, referring to the crown prince, Trump said to Bruce, “But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who had been a high-profiel critic of the Saudi government, was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
The crown prince told reporters that “it’s really painful to hear that anyone [who has] been losing his life for no real purpose and not in a legal way, and it’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia. We did all the right steps of investigation in Saudi Arabia, and we’ve improved our system to make sure nothing happened like that. It’s painful, and it’s a huge mistake, and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”
