President Donald Trump challenged ABC News on Sunday for covering up accusations against billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
“ABC is as bad as the rest of them,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Journalistic standards are nonexistent today.”
Trump shared a clip of Fox News reporter Jesse Watters blasting ABC News in a monologue about their “standards” after Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe revealed a clip of reporter Amy Robach expressing her frustration at the network for not airing her investigative work on Jeffrey Epstein three years ago.
“What the hell are ABC’s editorial standards?” Watters said on his show Watters World, noting ABC News reported on uncorroborated accusations against Justice Brett Kavanagh from lawyer Michael Avenatti.
“The press is so dishonest that we no longer have Freedom of the Press!” Trump concluded.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley on Wednesday also ridiculed ABC News in an interview with Breitbart News Daily.
“For ABC to make the comment that it wasn’t up to our standards to put on television, I guess that doesn’t apply to Kavanaugh, I guess that doesn’t apply to Covington kids, I guess that doesn’t apply when you put up a video that and say ‘look at the shelling in Syria’ but it’s actually Kentucky,” Gidley said.
Gidley also pointed to the so-called ABC News Brian Ross bombshell on the Russia report that actually shifted the stock markets before the news outlet had to walk back Ross’s reporting.
“You want to succeed, you try to take down a president, facts or reporting or news reporting be damned,” Gidley said.