President Donald Trump on Monday falsely disclaimed making a comment he had made on camera just five days prior. Then he launched a personal attack against the journalist who had accurately repeated his previous remark.
Trump has a long record of falsely denying he ever stated things he had said in public.
The subject of his latest false denial was the video footage of the September 2 US military strikes against a suspected drug-smuggling vessel in the Caribbean. The military conducted a follow-up strike to eliminate the individuals who had survived the initial strike.
The Trump administration publicly released the video of the initial strike but not the footage of the follow-up strike, which has been shown to members of Congress behind closed doors. On December 3, Trump asserted he has no issue releasing this video to the American populace.
Here’s the December 3 exchange he had with ABC News correspondent Selina Wang at the White House:
Wang: Mr. President, you released video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, but not the second video. Will you release video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves what occurred?
Trump: I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release, no trouble.
On Monday, another ABC News reporter, Rachel Scott, repeated Trump’s comment back to him while attempting to ask a query about the potential release of the additional video. But the president denied he had uttered what he said:
Scott: Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full 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 fake news.
Scott correctly noted, “You said that you would have no problem releasing the full vi(deo).” She then shifted back to her query. She noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth states the matter of whether to release the video is being reviewed, and she asked Trump if he is ordering Hegseth to release it.
“Whatever he decides is okay with me,” Trump stated.
Trump then offered a defense of the strikes, repeating his frequent false assertion that each 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 eventually interrupted to attempt to return to the topic of releasing the video, he called her “the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place” and “actually a terrible reporter.”
CNN has reached out to an ABC News spokesperson about the president’s comments regarding Scott. Another ABC News journalist, Jonathan Karl, wrote on the social media platform X that Scott “quoted President Trump accurately.”
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