President Donald Trump completely eviscerated ABC News after the network had a rather contentious interview with Vice President JD Vance. It all started when George Stephanopoulos, host of This Week, cut off Vance during an interview after he did not provide an answer to the anchor’s liking concerning bribery allegations brought against Trump’s border czar Tom Homan.
The president spoke with reporters during a meeting with the president of Argentina when a reporter from ABC News asked him a question. Trump refused to take the question, citing the interview with Vance as the reason. “After what you did with Stephanopoulos to the vice president of the United States, I don’t take questions from ABC fake news,” President Trump told the reporter.
During the interview between Stephanopoulos and Vance, the vice president answered the question about Homan by alleging the media was “going after” him “because he’s doing the job of enforcing the law.” Vance then added, “You’re focused on a bogus story, you’re insinuating criminal wrongdoing against a guy who has done nothing wrong, instead of focusing on the fact that our country is struggling because our government shut down.”
According to The Hill, Vance placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Democrats, particularly Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for the shutdown, which ultimately ended up becoming the longest in United States history. The vice president pointed out that the shutdown created by Democrats resulted in low-income women struggling to provide for their families.
At that point, a flustered and unhappy Stephanopoulos ended the interview, cutting off Vance and going to a commercial break. Vance later posted about the incident on his X account, saying Stephanopoulos “doesn’t care” about stories like Israel and Hamas agreeing to a peace deal proposed by the administration, or the impact of Chinese rare earth and magnet restrictions on global supply chains, nor the shutdown.
“[Stephanopoulos is] here to focus on the real story: a fake scandal involving Tom Homan,” the vice president’s post continued. The Hill also stated that multiple reports claim that Homan accepted money from undercover FBI agents who were posing as business executives. The money was in exchange for receiving assistance with being awarded government contracts if Trump won the election and became president.
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This, of course, was not the first time since Trump returned to the White House that he got into a verbal scuffle with ABC. He praised the network’s decision to yank late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for a week following comments he made about the Charlie Kirk assassination. ABC suspended Kimmel on the same day that Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr asked broadcasters to hold hosts and anchors accountable for comments on the assassination, specifically pointing out Kimmel.
ABC News and Stephanopoulos also agreed to settle a defamation suit brought by the president, issuing a public apology and donating $15 million to help fund Trump’s future presidential library. A commenter on the video clip on social media, showing support for the president’s comments toward ABC, said, “Respect is a two-way street — none given, none returned. It’s time to cancel ABC.”