Former President Donald Trump was burned again on Friday by granting a book interview to establishment media member Jon Karl.
During Karl’s 90-minute interview with Trump in March, the ABC News correspondent cited some January 6 protesters calling for violence against then-Vice President Mike Pence because of his role in certifying electoral college results after the 2020 presidential election.
“They were saying ‘Hang Mike Pence,'” Karl suggested to Trump at one point in the interview, according to Axios.
Trump seemed to avoid directly defending Karl’s quote of what people “were saying” about Pence but noted it was “common sense” that people should have been “angry” about the question of election integrity:
Trump: “He could have — well, the people were very angry.”
Karl: “They were saying ‘hang Mike Pence.'”
Trump: “Because it’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect. How can you — if you know a vote is fraudulent, right?”
Corporate media reporters and pundits immediately pounced on the Axios story Friday morning and proceeded to create a narrative that Trump “defended” the threats against Pence:
It is not the first time Trump has been burned by giving book interviews to people who wish to destroy him. The latest example of Trump speaking to the partisan media personally was with Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal. After Bender interviewed Trump, reports surfaced in July from Bender’s book that Trump said Hitler “did a lot of good things.” Trump’s spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, immediately condemned the report:
This is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired.
Trump has granted establishment media figures 22 interviews for 17 separate books, including:
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- Maggie Haberman (New York Times)
- Jonathan Karl (ABC News)
- Michael Bender (Wall Street Journal)
- Phil Rucker (Washington Post)
- Carol Leonnig (Washington Post)
- Susan Glasser (New Yorker)
- Peter Baker (New York Times)
- Jonathan Martin (New York Times)
- Alex Burns (New York Times)
- Ryan Lizza (Politico)
- Olivia Nuzzi (New York magazine)
- Jeremy Peters (New York Times)
- Ramin Setoodeh (Variety)
- Michael Wolff (USA Today)
Trump, however, said in July he would not grant further interviews to “authors” about his “very successful Administration” because they are “often bad people who write whatever comes to their mind or fits their agenda.”
“They write whatever they want to write anyway without sources, fact-checking, or asking whether or not an event is true or false,” he explained. “Frankly, so many stories are made-up, or pure fiction.”
“It has nothing to do with facts or reality. So when reading the garbage that the Fake News Media puts out, please remember this and take everything with a ‘grain of salt,’” Trump said.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø