‘I'm not a rapist': Trump after reporter reads press dinner shooter's manifesto, calls her a ‘disgrace’
US President Donald Trump on Sunday lashed out at a CBS reporter for reading out the alleged manifesto of suspected gunman Cole Tomas Allen, who opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington over the weekend.
Speaking to Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes, Trump was visibly angry after the reporter read out a part from Allen’s alleged manifesto, which linked his motive to the row caused by the Epstein files.
‘Not a rapist, not a pedophile’
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” read out O’Donnell, sparking Trump’s ire.
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“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody,” Trump said, to which the reporter asked if the US president felt the shooter was referring to him.
And then, Trump lost his cool.
“Excuse me, I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person,” Trump said, adding that he got associated with “stuff which has nothing to do” with me and that he was “totally exonerated.”
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“Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ll do this interview and they’ll probably’– I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself for reading that because I’m not any of those things,” said Trump, while taking a swipe at the Democrats.
Despite O’Donnell’s clarification that she was merely quoting what Allen wrote, Trump fired back, calling her a “disgrace.”
Trump on 60 minutes
The 60 minutes interview was the first one from US President Donald Trump following the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
In the interview, the Republican leader stated that he “wasn’t worried” about possible injuries and wanted to see what was actually going on when the shots were fired.
“I wanted to see what was happening. I wasn’t making it that easy for them. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time we started to realise maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of problem, a bad one – and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom,” he told O’Donnell.