Donald Trump brands ABC’s Rachel Scott ‘obnoxious’ for questioning his boat-strike video flip-flop
Despite receiving backlash for insulting female reporters every time they pose a difficult question, Trump isn’t changing his ways. This time, ABC’s Rachel Scott pressed him for clarity on his boat-strike video promise. But Grumpy Grandpa couldn’t take it and went straight to meltdown mode.
During the press meeting on Monday, Dec. 8, ABC reporter Rachel Scott was the only one in the room asking the questions Trump didn’t want to hear. And everything was fine until she brought up his promise from last week to release the boat-strike video. That’s when the gears in his brain seemed to stall.
Just five days earlier, on Wednesday, when another ABC reporter asked if he would release the footage of the controversial second boat strike, Trump confidently said:
I don’t know what they have. But whatever they have, we’d certainly release. No problem.
And he didn’t say it privately or off the record. Trump promised it on camera, directly to ABC Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang. But because the promised footage never appeared, ABC followed up. Rachel Scott reminded him politely and word-for-word:
“Mr. President, you said you had no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela.”
But Trump’s demented brain couldn’t remember his own statement. “I didn’t say that. That’s you who said that,” he snapped, immediately slapping on the fallback label: “This is ABC fake news.” To dodge the follow-up, Trump tried to pass the responsibility. “Whatever Hegseth wants to do is okay with me,” he said, as if he never made the promise.
But Scott didn’t let the goalpost move. She reminded him that Pete Hegseth is now saying the footage is “under review.” And then, asked the simplest possible question: Is Trump actually ordering Hegseth to release the full video? That’s when Trump abandoned the question and launched into a long rant instead:
So, with every boat we knock out of the water… we save 25,000 American lives. That was a boat loaded up with drugs. I saw the video. They were trying to turn the boat back to where it could float, and we didn’t want to see that. Cause that boat was loaded up with drugs, just like everything else. But every boat we shoot down, and I don’t know if you know, we’re 92 or 94% down in drugs coming in by the sea. And we’re trying to find out the 6%.
Trump kept circling back to his talking point that every boat he “shoots down” is saving “25,000 lives.” But in that whole rant, he still never answered the actual question. So Scott asked again, calmly, “Are you admitting to releasing the full video?”
And that was the moment he cracked. He couldn’t stand that she remembered the question when he was banking on her dropping it. “Didn’t I just tell you that?” he snapped and shifted fully into attack mode:
You’re the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you, you’re an obnoxious and terrible, actually, a terrible reporter. And it’s always the same thing with you. I told you, whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do, is okay with me.
One X user summed up the exchange with painful accuracy: “First, he doesn’t remember. Then it’s fake. Then it’s someone else’s decision.” And that’s exactly how the sequence played out — amnesia, denial, deflection, insult. Whether it was Trump’s memory failing him or just his signature refusal to answer a question straight, the hostility toward Scott was completely unprovoked.
Users argued that the only way to stop his abuse of journalists is to stop giving him the platform. Multiple commentators called on reporters to boycott Trump altogether because every press gaggle follows the same script. The moment accountability enters the room, the insults begin. At the end, he gets away with it all.
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