President Donald Trump raged at a female ABC News reporter, calling her “the most obnoxious,” after she asked whether his administration would commit to releasing the double-tap boat strike video.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said he didn’t order the second strike against an alleged drug-running vessel on September 2, the first of more than a dozen U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific against what administration officials call “narcoterrorists.” In a tense exchange at a White House roundtable Monday, Trump insisted that he never said he’d release footage of the double-tap strike — which he’d promised to make public just four days earlier — and simultaneously fired off his latest attack against a female reporter.
“Mr. President, you said you’d have ‘no problem’ releasing the full video of that strike on September 2 off the coast of Venezuela. Secretary Hegseth —” ABC News senior political correspondent Rachel Scott began, before the president interjected.
“I didn’t say that. You said that. I didn’t say that,” he objected. “This is ABC ‘Fake’ News,” Trump then said quietly to those sitting beside him.
Scott pushed back: “You said you’d have ‘no problem’ releasing the full video.”
She was quoting Trump, who last week was asked whether his administration would be open to releasing footage of the September 2 attack. “I don’t know what they have. But what they have, we’ll certainly release. No problem,” the president said at the time.
“He announced that it's under review. Are you ordering the secretary to release that video?” Scott asked.
“No. Whatever he decides is OK with me,” the president replied.
Trump then spent a few minutes justifying the attack, claiming the boat was “loaded up with drugs.” The journalist then followed up with a different question.
“Are you committed to releasing the full video?” Scott pressed.
“Didn’t I just tell you that?” Trump snapped, scowling. “You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you: you are an obnoxious — actually a terrible — reporter and it’s always the same thing with you.”
“I told you: Whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me,” he said.
Over the weekend, Hegseth didn’t commit to releasing the footage of the controversial strike. “We’re reviewing it right now to make sure sources, methods, I mean, it’s an ongoing operation, [tactics, techniques and procedures], we’ve got operators out there doing this right now,” he said, according to The Hill.
“I fully support that strike,” Hegseth added. “I would have made the same call myself.”
Questions around the circumstances of the so-called double-tap strike on September 2 have plagued the Trump administration.
The Washington Post has reported that Hegseth ordered the military to “kill everybody” on the vessel, so after the first strike left two survivors clinging to wreckage, the admiral who oversaw the operation ordered a second strike, supposedly to comply with Hegseth’s earlier order. The defense secretary said he didn’t “stick around” to see the second strike.
Trump’s insults aimed at Scott marked his latest in a series of attacks against female reporters over the last month.
In mid-November, the president lashed out at Bloomberg’s White House correspondent Catherine Lucey, telling her to be “quiet, piggy,” on Air Force One when she asked about the Jeffrey Epstein Files.
Days later, he targeted another Bloomberg reporter, who had apparently interrupted him: “Will you let me finish my statement? You are the worst. You’re with Bloomberg, right? You are the worst. I don’t know why they even have you.”
Later that week, after ABC News’ chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce asked about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House, Trump slammed her as being a “terrible person and a terrible reporter.”
The day before Thanksgiving, Trump raged that New York Times journalist Katie Rogers was “assigned to only write bad things” about him and called her “a third-rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”
On Thanksgiving, he dubbed CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes a “stupid person” after she asked about the vetting of an Afghan national who’s been accused of shooting two members of the National Guard in D.C.
Last week, he told CBS News’ Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang she would have been “incapable” of passing a cognitive test after she asked the president about his recent MRI scan. Trump then pointed at another female reporter, saying "you too" before walking off.
Over the weekend, he called CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins “Stupid and Nasty” in a Truth Social post after she asked the president about how his newly received FIFA Peace Prize might conflict with his “pledge to strike Venezuela.”
“President Trump has never been politically correct, never holds back, and in large part, the American people re-elected him for his transparency,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Independent last week. “This has nothing to do with gender – it has everything to do with the fact that the President’s and the public’s trust in the media is at all time lows.”
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