President Donald Trump on Monday falsely denied making a comment he had made on camera just five days earlier. He then launched a personal attack against the reporter who had accurately repeated his earlier remark.
Trump has a long history of falsely denying that he ever said things he had said in public.
The subject of his latest false denial was the footage of the September 2 US military raids on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean. The military carried out a follow-up strike to kill the people who had survived the first strike.
The Trump administration has publicly released the video of the initial strike but not the video of the follow-up strike, which was shown to members of Congress behind closed doors. On December 3, Trump said that he has no problem releasing this video to the American people.
Here’s the December 3rd exchange he had with ABC News reporter Selina Wang at the White House:
Wang: Mr. President, you released a video of that first boat attack on September 2, but not the second video. Will you release a video of that strike so the American people can see for themselves what happened?
Trump: I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we will certainly go out, no problem.
On Monday, another ABC News reporter, Rachel Scott, repeated Trump’s comment back to him while trying to ask a question about the potential release of the additional video. But the president denied that he had said what he said:
Scott: Mr. President, you said that you would have no problem releasing the full video of that strike on September 2 off the coast of Venezuela. Secretary Hegseth now says –
Trump: I didn’t say that. That – you said that, I didn’t say that. This is fake ABC news.
Scott correctly noted, “You said you’d have no problem releasing the full vi(deo).” Then she went back to her question. She noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the question of whether to release the video is under review, and asked Trump if he is ordering Hegseth to release it.
“Whatever he decides is fine with me,” Trump said.
Trump then offered a defense of the attacks, repeating his frequent false claim that each boat destroyed saves “25,000 American lives” and claiming that 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 with drugs.” When Scott eventually intercepted to try to get back to the issue of releasing the video, he called her “the most disgusting reporter in the whole place” and “actually a terrible reporter.”
CNN reached out to an ABC News spokesperson about the president’s remarks about Scott. Another ABC News reporter, Jonathan Karl, wrote on the social media platform X that Scott “accurately quoted President Trump.”
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