ABC News’ Jon Karl wasn’t going to take it anymore.
As President Donald Trump complained there was a lot of “bad reporting out there” at Wednesday’s White House coronavirus briefing, Karl stood up to him.
“That’s not true,” the reporter interrupted in a raised voice. “That’s not true.”
Trump trashes the media regularly at the briefings, but Karl’s forceful defence made this one a little different.
The testy moment touched off when Trump railed against what he claimed was the media’s negativity.
“You people aren’t satisfied,” he said. “So let’s say we had 350 million people in the United States. Let’s say you gave every one of those people a test. So you give 350 million people a test 10 times. The fake news media would say, ‘Where’s the 11th time? He didn’t do his job. Trump didn’t do his job.’ Because you have a lot of bad reporting out there. It is very sad.”
That’s when Karl attempted to correct him. “That’s not true,” Karl interrupted. “That’s not true.”
“You are one of the leaders of the bad reporting,” Trump responded.
“No, but it’s not true,” Karl replied.
Trump then criticised Karl’s reporting on the production of ventilators, claiming the “fake news was unhappy that it was done.”
“Who’s unhappy?” Karl snapped back.
The journalist later explained his outburst, saying he “couldn’t frankly help myself.”
“I felt it was entirely appropriate. … You can’t just say stuff that is completely and totally false,” Karl said in a Politics and Prose interview promoting his book, “Front Row At The Trump Show.”
Karl previously called Trump’s repeated attacks on the media “among the fakest things right now.”
“He praises me to his friends and then he’ll come out right after and blast me in front of the cameras,” Karl said earlier this month.