US President Donald Trump, throughout a gathering with Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, not pictured, within the Oval Workplace of the White Home in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
President Donald Trump on Tuesday referred to as for ABC’s broadcast license to be revoked as he angrily lashed out at a reporter from the community who requested why he has not launched information on infamous intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, his former good friend.
“I feel you’re a horrible reporter,” Trump instructed ABC Information White Home correspondent Mary Bruce.
The president stated he didn’t like Bruce’s “perspective.”
“You ought to return and discover ways to be a reporter. No extra questions from you,” Trump stated within the Oval Workplace, the place he was assembly with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s tirade got here shortly earlier than the Home of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a invoice to compel the Division of Justice to launch all of its information on Epstein.
The DOJ earlier this yr refused to launch these paperwork, regardless of prior guarantees by Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi and different Trump administration officers.
Trump doesn’t want to attend for Congress to move a invoice. He may order the DOJ to launch extra Epstein information.
“Why watch for Congress to launch the Epstein information?” Bruce requested the president. “Why not simply do it now?”
Trump stated, “So far as the Epstein information … I’ve nothing to do with” him.
“I threw him out of my membership a few years in the past as a result of I assumed he was a sick pervert,” Trump stated, referring to his Mar-a-Lago Membership in Palm Seaside, Florida.
“Persons are sensible to your hoax,” the president instructed the reporter. “Your crappy firm is without doubt one of the perpetrators.”
“And I will inform you one thing,” Trump stated. “I feel the license needs to be taken away from ABC. As a result of your information is so faux and so improper.”
“We’ve got an amazing commissioner … who ought to have a look at that,” he added, apparently referring to Federal Communications Fee Chair Brendan Carr, whose company oversees broadcast licenses.
In September, Carr threatened ABC’s license over feedback by late-night present Jimmy Kimmel in regards to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“We are able to do that the straightforward means or the exhausting means,” stated Carr on a podcast on the time. “These firms can discover methods to vary conduct, to take motion, frankly, on Kimmel, or , there’s going to be further work for the FCC forward.”
Hours after Carr’s remarks, ABC suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Dwell!”
The present returned to air a couple of week later after backlash in opposition to ABC and its dad or mum firm, Disney.
Trump has repeatedly referred to as the Epstein matter a “hoax” created by Democrats, regardless that members of Trump’s Make America Nice Once more motion had been main advocates for releasing the information.
And Trump didn’t dissuade Republican allies in Congress from supporting the invoice to launch the information.
On Sunday night time, because the Epstein invoice’s possibilities of passage appeared to rise, Trump all of the sudden reversed course and urged his GOP allies to assist the measure.
On Monday, Trump stated he would signal the invoice if Congress passes it.
Trump and Epstein had been longtime buddies however had a falling out years earlier than Epstein killed himself in jail in August 2019 after being arrested on federal little one intercourse trafficking prices.
Final week, the Home Oversight Committee launched emails exhibiting Epstein discussing Trump.
In a single e mail from 2019, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew in regards to the women.”
