President Donald Trump on Monday falsely denied making a remark he had made on camera simply five days prior. Then he launched a private assault towards the reporter who had precisely repeated his earlier comment.
Trump has a long history of falsely denying he ever said issues he had said in public.
The topic of his newest false denial was the video footage of the September 2 US army strikes towards a suspected drug-smuggling boat within the Caribbean. The army conducted a follow-up strike to kill the individuals who had survived the primary strike.
The Trump administration publicly launched the video of the preliminary strike however not the video of the follow-up strike, which has been shown to members of Congress behind closed doorways. On December 3, Trump said he has no downside releasing this video to the American folks.
Here’s the December 3 exchange he had with ABC News reporter Selina Wang on the White House:
Wang: Mr. President, you launched video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, however not the second video. Will you launch video of that strike in order that the American folks can see for themselves what occurred?
Trump: I don’t know what they’ve, however no matter they’ve we’d actually launch, no downside.
On Monday, one other ABC News reporter, Rachel Scott, repeated Trump’s comment back to him whereas making an attempt to ask a query in regards to the potential launch of the extra video. But the president denied he had said what he said:
Scott: Mr. President, you said you’ll don’t have any downside with releasing the total video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela. Secretary Hegseth now says –
Trump: I didn’t say that. That’s – you said that, I didn’t say that. This is ABC faux information.
Scott appropriately famous, “You said that you would have no problem releasing the full vi(deo).” She then pivoted again to her query. She famous that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the query of whether or not to launch the video is being reviewed, and he or she requested Trump if he is ordering Hegseth to launch it.
“Whatever he decides is okay with me,” Trump said.
Trump then provided a protection of the strikes, repeating his frequent false claim that every boat destroyed saves “25,000 American lives” and claiming the survivors “were trying to turn the boat back to where it could float, and we didn’t want to see that, because that boat was loaded up with drugs.” When Scott finally interjected to attempt to return to the problem of releasing the video, he known as her “the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place” and “actually a terrible reporter.”
NCS has reached out to an ABC News spokesperson in regards to the president’s remarks about Scott. Another ABC News journalist, Jonathan Karl, wrote on the social media platform X that Scott “quoted President Trump accurately.”