Donald Trump told CBS News anchor Norah O'Donnell she was a 'disgrace' for reading excerpts of Cole Thomas Allen's manifesto that made wild accusations toward the President. Allen, 31, sent the outrageous claims to his family ten minutes prior to attempting to attack the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which Trump was attending for the first time in over a decade.
In an interview with 60 Minutes Sunday, O'Donnell read some of the most inciting lines of Allen's missive which Trump slammed. 'He appears to reference a motive. In it, he writes this: quote, ''Administrative officials, they are targets.'' He also wrote this: ''I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.'' What's your reaction to that?'
Trump replied: 'Well, 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 am not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody.' O'Donnell attempted to interrupt Trump, asking: 'Oh, do you think he was referring to you?' 'Excuse me. Excuse me. I am not a pedophile,' he quickly said, cutting the anchor off.
Trump then appeared to refer to what he felt was the connection Allen was attempting to make between himself and pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. 'You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with all stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let's say, Epstein or other things.' Trump has never been charged with a crime in connection to Epstein, who Trump has said he kicked out of his Mar-a-Lago club decades ago.
The President continued to go after O'Donnell and appeared to regret going on with the interview at all. 'But I said to myself, you know, I'll do this interview and they'll probably — I read the manifesto. It was a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that, because I'm not any of those things.' O'Donnell continued to clarify that those were the gunman's words but he was having none of it. 'Excuse me. Excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that on 60 minutes. You're a disgrace. But go ahead, let's finish the interview,' he said.
O'Donnell had asked Trump if he may try to improve his relationship with a combative press in the wake of the shooting. 'Look, for whatever reason, we disagree on a lot of subjects. We talked about crime, I am very strong on crime. It seems like the press isn't,' Trump said. 'It's not so much the press, but the press plus the Democrats. It's almost like they are one and the same.'
