President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that ABC should lose its broadcast license because he did not like that its White House reporter asked him about the Jeffrey Epstein files during a meeting with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Photo by Nathan Howard/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump said that ABC should lose its broadcasting license after a reporter for the network asked why he has not released the Jeffrey Epstein files.
ABC News reporter Mary Bruce on Tuesday asked Trump why he is waiting for Congress to pass a bill requiring the administration to release the files instead of simply ordering the Department of Justice to do so himself.
“You know, it’s not just the question that I mind,” Trump told Bruce when she asked about the files. “It’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions.”
Bruce asked Trump about the files as he was meeting in the Oval Office with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 427-1 to require the administration to release the files and the Senate followed it up with unanimous approval of the measure.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and other administration officials have said they would release the files for months but thus far have not done so.
Although Trump did not directly answer why he has not ordered the files to be released, he once again noted that he has “nothing to do with him” after he “threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert.”
The president followed the comment up by telling Bruce that “people are wise to your hoax” — which he has repeatedly referred to the Epstein scandal as — and that “your crappy company is one of the perpetrators.
“And I’ll tell you something,” Trump said. “I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and so wrong.”
He suggested that FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr should take a look at the company’s broadcast license.
Carr in September threatened ABC over its license after comments that Jimmy Kimmel made on his show about the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, and the network briefly removed him from his show after the threat.
