Jonathan Karl Describes Surreal Moment Trump Quietly Praised Him After Public Attack

ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl opened up about what it’s really like to be the target of President Donald Trump’s insults, and how the president often “doesn’t really mean it,” on Tuesday’s episode of Mediaite’s Press Club.

“For the most part, Trump doesn’t really mean it,” Karl told Mediaite’s founding editor Colby Hall. “There was an incident in the Oval Office a few weeks ago… I was asking about free speech… and some of [Trump’s] own allies were saying, ‘Whoa, even hate speech is free speech.’ I asked a series of questions about that. He really went after me.”

But moments after the cameras stopped rolling, the tone shifted. “As soon as it was over, ” said Karl, “Trump motioned to me. I walked toward the Resolute Desk, and he said, ‘We’re OK, we’re good.’ And I said to him, ‘You were pretty tough there.’ He said, ‘Oh no, you were tough.’ And as I walked out, you can hear him on the pool feed saying, ‘Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Jon.’ This was after he’d gone after me like he hated me.”

Karl, who’s covered Trump for decades — just publishing a book titled Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America — said the president’s contradictions are baked into his persona. “He viewed his entire presidency as the world’s greatest reality show,” Karl said. “By that metric, it was the most successful the world had ever seen.”

For him, the lesson is simple: “Who cares if he insults me? I’m not going to stand up there and say, ‘How dare you!’… I’m just doing the job. And I think they also see that even when they don’t like my reporting, I’m accurate and fair.”

Watch the full conversation via Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.