{"id":390954,"date":"2025-11-19T23:35:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/390954\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T23:35:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:35:17","slug":"white-house-goes-after-abc-again-with-fake-news-press-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/390954\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Goes After ABC Again With “Fake News” Press Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA day after President Donald Trump<\/a> blew up at ABC News<\/a> correspondent Mary Bruce<\/a> and called for the network to lose its broadcast license, the White House amped up its attacks, sending out a press release on claiming that the network is \u201ca Democrat spin operation masquerading as a broadcast network.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe release runs through a timeline<\/a> of what the White House claims is \u201ca long, rich tradition of peddling lies, conspiracies, and outright opinion thinly veiled as fact.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBut it underscores Trump\u2019s anger at Bruce for merely asking his guest at the White House, Saudi Crown Prince\u00a0Mohammed bin Salman<\/a>,\u00a0about the 2018 murder of journalist\u00a0Jamal Khashoggi<\/a>. She later asked the president about the Jeffrey Epstein files.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, Trump chided Bruce for asking a \u201chorrible,\u201d \u201cinsubordinate\u201d and \u201cjust a terrible question.\u201d Trump said to her, \u201cYou\u2019re all psyched up. Somebody psyched you over at ABC and they\u2019re going to psych it. You\u2019re a terrible person and a terrible reporter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it\u2019s so wrong, and we have a great commissioner, the chairman, who should look at that.\u201d Trump was referring to his FCC chairman, Brendan Carr.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe network has issued no statement defending Bruce, even though a host of her colleagues and journalism groups have. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn Good Morning America, co-host Robin Roberts alluded to Trump\u2019s blow up as she spoke to Bruce. \u201cMary, I don\u2019t have to tell you. These are extremely challenging times, and thank you for your reporting and your willingness to ask these types of questions. It must be surreal for you, Mary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is a little surreal, and Robin, thank you for that, but it is also, just our job,\u201d Bruce said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAmen,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the press release, the White House cited, among other things, an instance in 2017 when the network suspended Brian Ross for a \u201cserious error\u201d after he reported that Trump directed Michael Flynn, briefly his national security adviser, to contact Russian officials during the previous year\u2019s presidential election. <\/p>\n

\n\tAlso mentioned was the incident in June with anchor and correspondent Terry Moran, whose contract was not renewed after he posted on social media that Trump aide Stephen Miller was a \u201cworld-class hater.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the White House citations are over word choices and are countered by fact checks. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe White House claimed that, in a September interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, George Stephanopoulos falsely insisted \u201cthat people had somehow \u2018died\u2019 because of the Trump Administration\u2019s decision to shutter a bloated, wasteful bureaucratic agency.\u201d The New York Times\u2019 Nicholas Kristof has reported <\/a>on deaths from the abrupt closure of foreign relief agency USAID, while studies warn of millions of deaths through the decade <\/a>if funding is not restored.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe White House also dinged the network for what it did not cover, including \u201cthe Office of National Intelligence\u2019s announcement of a landmark investigation into Obama-era politicization and manufacturing of intelligence assessments.\u201d But sites like Factcheck.org found the report <\/a>from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard \u201cmisleading.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe network and The Walt Disney Co. have grappled with how to respond to Trump, who has threatened to use his regulatory power to go after reporting he doesn\u2019t like or, in the case of Bruce, even questions that displease him.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn December, before Trump returned to office, ABC settled a lawsuit he brought against the network fpr $16 million. Trump sued after Stephanopoulos stated on This Week that \u201cjuries have found\u201d the then-former president \u201cliable for rape.\u201d In fact, a jury found Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer\u00a0E. Jean Carroll<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge in Carroll\u2019s case, Lewis Kaplan, wrote in a later ruling, \u201cThe finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was \u2018raped\u2019 within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump \u2018raped\u2019 her as many people commonly understand the word \u2018rape.\u2019 Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMore recently, ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel from the air, hours after Carr, on a podcast, warned the network<\/a> over comments that the late-night host made about Charlie Kirk. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe can do this the easy way, or the hard way,\u201d Carr said. \u201cThese companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there\u2019s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a backlash that saw cancellations of Disney+ subscriptions, ABC returned Kimmel to the air the next week.<\/p>\n

\n\tKhashoggi, a critic of the Saudi regime and columnist for The Washington Post, was murdered at the country\u2019s Turkish consulate in 2018. During Trump\u2019s first term, the CIA concluded that bin Salman ordered his killing.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the White House on Tuesday, Trump dismissed the Khashoggi murder, telling reporters, \u201cWhether you like him or didn\u2019t like him, things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also scolded Bruce for even bringing the issue up. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A day after President Donald Trump blew up at ABC News correspondent Mary Bruce and called for the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":390955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[10509,69,36555,184884,185260,183237,50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-390954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-abc-news","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-electionline","12":"tag-jamal-khashoggi","13":"tag-mary-bruce","14":"tag-mohammed-bin-salman","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115578989893162997","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}