In a somewhat surprising tale out of ABC News, known for its generally hostile stance to President Donald Trump and his administration, ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl revealed that the president called him to inquire about his well-being after the horrible shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
For reference, the attack occurred on the night of Saturday, April 25. The president immediately had to do a press conference regarding the matter, but the next morning, he apparently called Karl quite early in the day to enquire as to whether he was safe and doing well following the attack the night before. Karl said the attack came at about 7 am.
Karl, describing the call and how it went, along with what the president was asking, said, “My phone rang shortly after 7am, my landline, George, actually a number that few people call, and it was President Trump calling … At first he was calling to see if I was OK, with what happened last night; ‘Are you OK?’”
Building on that, Karl told host George Stephanopoulos that President Trump “reiterated many of the things he said in his press conference last night, emphasizing the unity that he felt in that moment, that he felt at the dinner, before the shooting and certainly after, with the people who reached out to him.”
Further, he noted that the president is firm in his belief that the dinner must be rescheduled so that the would-be assassin cannot get away with trying to use nefarious means to end it, saying, “And he said absolutely, and he was quite firm about this, that dinner must be rescheduled. It must be rescheduled.”
Adding to that and emphasizing his point, Karl added, “He knows that I was a former president of the White House Correspondents Association, and worked with him on a dinner that never actually happened back during covid. And he was saying, ‘We’ve got to get this dinner back on. It has to happen.'”
Additionally, Karl said he spoke to Oz Pearlman, a comedian who was performing at the event. Describing Pearlman’s reaction, Karl said, “He said that the thought that went through his mind was that he thought that President Trump had been shot.”
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Karl continued, “Because [Trump] had that look of shock in his eyes, and he was brought down so hard by the Secret Service and the thought that went through his head beyond that was, ‘We’re all going to die.’ He was absolutely terrified in that moment.”
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Entertainingly, Trump has sounded off on and ridiculed Karl in the past. Speaking in a post on Truth Social back in early April, for example, the president said, “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.” That was in reference to Karl’s then-newly released book about the president, the third book he has written.