President Donald Trump admonished ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl on Tuesday, telling him he has “a lot of hate in [his] heart.”
Trump blasted ABC News’s top correspondent while gaggling with reporters before boarding Marine One at the White House en route to the United Kingdom. Karl had asked about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s comments about prosecuting hate speech.
“What do you make of Pam Bondi saying she’s gonna go after hate speech? A lot of people, a lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech,” Karl asked.
“She’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart, maybe they’ll come after ABC,” Trump said.
“Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they’ll have to go after you. Look, we want everything to be fair. It hasn’t been fair, and the radical left has done tremendous damage to the country, but we’re fixing it,” he added.
Trump sued ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos in March 2024, claiming his “reputation was besmirched.” ABC News agreed to settle the lawsuit for $15 million, in addition to covering Trump’s attorney fees and issuing a public apology, as Breitbart News previously reported:
The incident occurred during Stephanopoulos’s interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) on March 10. Stephanpoulos said during the interview, “Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?”
Karl’s question comes as Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote Monday in a post on X that “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.”
“You cannot call for someone’s murder. You cannot swat a Member of Congress. You cannot dox a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as ‘free speech.’ These acts are punishable crimes, and every single threat will be met with the full force of the law,” she added.
In an episode of the Katie Miller Podcast, which aired prior to Bondi’s tweet on Monday, Bondi said the Department of Justice would target those engaging in “hate speech.”
“We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, and that’s across the aisle,” she said.
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