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 Photographs
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 recordsdata on infamous intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, his former buddy.
“I believe you’re a horrible reporter,” Trump instructed ABC Information White Home correspondent Mary Bruce.
The president mentioned he didn’t like Bruce’s “angle.”
“You ought to return and discover ways to be a reporter. No extra questions from you,” Trump mentioned 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 data on Epstein.
The DOJ earlier this yr refused to launch these paperwork, regardless of prior guarantees by Lawyer 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 recordsdata.
“Why await Congress to launch the Epstein recordsdata?” Bruce requested the president. “Why not simply do it now?”
Trump mentioned, “So far as the Epstein recordsdata … 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 believed he was a sick pervert,” Trump mentioned, referring to his Mar-a-Lago Membership in Palm Seashore, Florida.
“Individuals are clever to your hoax,” the president instructed the reporter. “Your crappy firm is among the perpetrators.”
“And I will let you know one thing,” Trump mentioned. “I believe the license ought to be taken away from ABC. As a result of your information is so pretend and so improper.”
“Now we have an excellent commissioner … who ought to take 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 will do that the simple approach or the arduous approach,” mentioned 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 Reside!”
The present returned to air a few week later after backlash towards ABC and its guardian firm, Disney.
Trump has repeatedly referred to as the Epstein matter a “hoax” created by Democrats, though members of Trump’s Make America Nice Once more motion had been main advocates for releasing the recordsdata.
And Trump didn’t dissuade Republican allies in Congress from supporting the invoice to launch the recordsdata.
On Sunday evening, 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 mentioned he would signal the invoice if Congress passes it.
Trump and Epstein had been longtime pals, however had a falling out years earlier than Epstein killed himself in jail in August 2019 after being arrested on federal youngster intercourse trafficking fees.
Final week, the Home Oversight Committee launched emails displaying Epstein discussing Trump.
In a single electronic mail from 2019, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew in regards to the women.”
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