President Donald Trump lashed out at ABC News, calling the broadcaster “fake news” and refusing to answer a question from one of its reporters in retribution for a controversial JD Vance interview.
On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, host George Stephanopoulos cut off the vice president for not answering questions about Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, reportedly accepting a $50,000 bribe last year.
At a White House briefing on Tuesday, Trump made a point of not answering a shouted question from an ABC reporter, saying, “You’re ‘ABC Fake News.’”
He added, “I don’t take questions from ‘ABC Fake News’ after what you did with Stephanopoulos to the vice president of the United States.”
Earlier in the briefing, Trump called Stephanopoulos a “nasty person,” and said it was “inappropriate to cut off a highly respected vice president of the United States mid-sentence.”
Trump also referred to the $15 million that ABC News agreed to pay last year toward Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit involving Stephanopoulos.
During Sunday’s tense interview, Stephanopoulos attempted to ask Vance about the bribe Homan, the country’s top immigration official, reportedly accepted as part of an FBI sting operation last year.
Last month, MSNBC reported that the Homan probe was dropped once Trump became president for a second time, and the Department of Justice confirmed the case had been shelved because of “no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”
Amid a heated back-and-forth about whether Homan had accepted a bag of cash, with Vance accusing Stephanopoulos of going down a “weird left-wing rabbit hole,” the anchor stated: “You did not answer the question. Thank you for your time this morning.”
When Vance protested by saying, “No, George, I said that I…” the vice president was cut off, and Stephanopoulos threw to a commercial.
Watch the end of the Vance-Stephanopoulos exchange below.