Trump Lashes Out at ABC’s Jon Karl In Late-Night Rant — Blurts ‘Don’t Buy The Book!’
President Donald Trump lashed out at ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl in a late-night rant filled with errors and falsehoods, demanding “Don’t buy the book!” that Karl wrote.
Karl is the longtime ABC News anchor and White House correspondent, and author of the tell-all tome “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign that Changed America.”
The book has been out since October, but it was late at night on Friday when Trump took to Truth Social to blurt out an entreaty to his followers not to purchase it:
Third rate news “anchor” Jonathan Karl of ABC Fake News, the worst and most corrupt Network in the business, wrote another made up book about me where his stories and “reporting” bare no relationship to the truth. ABC was already forced to pay me $16,000,000 because of their false and misleading reporting. That was a Liddle’ George Slopadopolus error, but Karl is worse. A waste of time – Fictitious quotes. Don’t buy the book! President DJT
The president routinely and falsely claims that CBS and ABC were forced to pay out millions in lawsuits — which were actually settled voluntarily.
The attack comes days after Trump spoke to Karl on the phone to hype his address to the nation on the Iran war, which Karl described in a social media video:
ABC NEWS CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT JONATHAN KARL: So I had a lengthy phone call with President Trump yesterday. I’m going to try to summarize what was said over the course of about 20 minutes.
First of all, obviously, Iran was front and center. The president expressed great confidence that everything was going to work out fine in Iran.
He said he was negotiating, that there has been effectively regime change, and that the regime now in place is much more reasonable and much more moderate.
I asked him specifically if he was talking to the speaker of the Iranian parliament. He said yes, and that the guy was quite reasonable.
I pointed out that the speaker had been hitting him back and forth on social media, sometimes seeming to mock him. Trump said he’s been much better lately.
But then he added what was clearly a threat to this person he says he’s negotiating with. He said, “We know where he lives. Let me put it that way.”
The conversation touched on a whole bunch of other issues. One thing Trump was quite eager to talk about was his ballroom.
During the call, he sent me—or had one of his aides send me—images of artists’ renderings of what the ballroom will look like. This was just hours before a judge ordered a halt to the construction.
He was also talking about how his signature is going to be on the dollar bill. He was excited that the airport in Florida and Palm Beach is going to be named after him.
He wanted to know if I had seen the images of the renderings of the Trump Library that will eventually be built in Florida. He said it would be 82 stories and in the best location. It was going to be a five-star hotel anyway.
The bottom line is that over the course of this entire discussion, what struck me more than anything is that Donald Trump seems to have no concerns. He seems extremely confident—supremely confident—that things will work out in Iran.
We talked about the midterms and the bad poll numbers he’s seen. He said he’s not worried about that. He said, “I can only do what I have to do.”
Overall, he just seemed like he wanted to have a conversation. He did not seem like a president struggling through the very difficult circumstances of a war in the Middle East.
Watch above via Jonathan Karl.
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