Trump denies ABC reporter's claim that he called to check on him after WHCA dinner shooting

President Trump fired back at ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl on Monday, flatly denying Karl's account that the president called him the morning after the shooting near the White House Correspondents' Association dinner to ask if he was safe. Trump called the claim "very dishonest reporting" and said it was Karl who had reached out, not the other way around.

The dispute, playing out on competing social media platforms more than a week after Karl first told his version, offers a clean window into the ongoing friction between this White House and the press corps that covers it. It also lands in the middle of a far more serious story: the federal prosecution of the man charged with trying to assassinate the president.

The facts of the shooting itself are not in question. A gunman opened fire in the vicinity of the WHCA dinner, striking a Secret Service agent. The 31-year-old suspect, Cole Allen, was charged last Monday with attempting to assassinate Trump and with additional federal firearms violations. He appeared in court Monday for a detention hearing. The D.C. Jail had removed Allen from suicide watch a day earlier.

Two versions of one phone call

Karl, a longtime chief Washington correspondent at ABC News, posted a video to X on April 26 in which he said Trump called him just after 7 a.m. EDT, the morning after the incident. Karl said the president asked if he was "okay," emphasized the need for "unity," and said the WHCA dinner must be rescheduled.

Trump's response came Monday on Truth Social, and it was blunt. As The Hill reported, the president wrote:

"Jonathan Karl, of ABC Fake News, made a statement that I called him early in the morning, the day after the assassination attempt, to ask whether or not HE was OK. No, this was a hit on ME, not HIM, and I didn't make such a call, why would I do that?"

Trump went further, claiming Karl was the one who initiated contact, and that Trump never picked up.

"He called me, but I didn't take his call, He just confirmed that to me when he called again."

The president then sharpened the point: "I would say that's very dishonest reporting. He's trying to make himself look important but, I'm not surprised, because it comes from ABC Fake News!" The Hill reached out to ABC News for comment but did not report receiving a response.

The two accounts cannot both be true. Either the president called Karl to check on him, or Karl called the president and was rebuffed. There is no third option. And the fact that Newsmax reported the same denial, noting Trump accused ABC of misrepresenting the exchange, confirms this is not a passing aside, it is a direct, on-the-record contradiction from the president of the United States.

A pattern of press-corps friction

The Karl dispute does not exist in a vacuum. The relationship between the Trump White House and the Washington press corps has been defined by mutual suspicion and regular confrontation. Journalists have pursued access to Trump's personal communications with an intensity that the administration has repeatedly waved off as overreach, a dynamic explored in recent reporting on reporters chasing Trump's personal phone while the White House dismissed the calls as casual.

Karl's claim has a convenient shape to it. In his telling, the president of the United States, the actual target of an assassination attempt, picked up the phone at dawn to ask a reporter if the reporter was all right. That framing places Karl at the center of a story in which he is, at best, a bystander.

Trump's version, by contrast, casts Karl as the one seeking the president's attention and then misrepresenting the interaction publicly. The president said Karl "just confirmed that to me when he called again" on Monday, suggesting the two spoke the same day Trump posted his denial, and that Karl effectively conceded the point in private.

Without a recording or independent corroboration, the public is left with a he-said, he-said standoff. But the burden of proof ought to fall on the party making the more self-serving claim. And in this case, the reporter's version is the one that puts the reporter in a flattering light.

The real story: an assassination attempt and its fallout

While the media chews over who called whom, the substance of the shooting continues to develop. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said Sunday that investigators had been able to "definitively" determine that the bullet striking a Secret Service agent came from the alleged gunman's weapon.

Pirro's language on CNN's "State of the Union" left no room for ambiguity. She told host Jake Tapper:

"It is definitively his bullet, he hit at that Secret Service agent, he had every intention to kill him and anyone who got in his way on his way to killing the president of the United States."

That is a prosecutor speaking on the record about intent to murder the president. It is the kind of statement that, in a saner media environment, would dominate every front page. Instead, it competes for attention with a squabble over a phone call.

Allen, the suspect, now sits in the D.C. Jail facing charges that could carry the most severe federal penalties. His detention hearing Monday will help determine whether he remains behind bars as the case proceeds. The removal from suicide watch a day earlier suggests the jail assessed his immediate risk had changed, though no further details were reported.

The WHCA dinner itself remains in limbo. Weijia Jiang of CBS News, who serves as WHCA president, told members Friday that the association's board is "working through options for a 'rescheduled event,'" CNN reported. Several White House correspondents have said the dinner should be hosted again. The security implications of staging another large gathering of media and political figures, after a gunman targeted the last one, are obvious.

The broader security environment around the president has drawn sustained attention. First Lady Melania Trump's composure during the Secret Service evacuation was noted by her own advisor in the immediate aftermath.

Beyond the dinner: geopolitical tensions surface

The Monday phone conversation between Trump and Karl, the one both men agree happened, at least in some form, apparently ranged beyond the shooting. Trump said Iranian drones and missiles fired at the United Arab Emirates "were shot down for the most part." He also said South Korea "should take some action" after Iranian forces struck a cargo ship from that country in the Strait of Hormuz.

Those comments, dropped into a call with a reporter, underscore how casually high-level geopolitical information can flow during what the White House treats as routine media contact. The administration's posture toward the press, including sharp criticism of media coverage of the Iran campaign, has not prevented these exchanges from happening.

Whether that openness is a feature or a vulnerability depends on your perspective. But it makes the question of who initiated the call, and what was said, more than a gossip item. If Karl is fabricating or embellishing the nature of his access, that matters for the credibility of every story he files. If Trump is misremembering or rewriting the exchange, that matters too, though the president's account includes the specific detail that Karl "confirmed" Trump's version in a subsequent call.

What remains unanswered

ABC News has not publicly responded to Trump's denial. Karl has not, as of the article's publication, issued a rebuttal to the president's Truth Social post. The absence of a response from either Karl or his network is itself notable. In a dispute this direct, one man says he made the call, the other says he didn't, silence from the accused party is rarely a sign of confidence.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have moved to fund a $400 million White House ballroom in the wake of the dinner shooting, a sign that the security concerns raised by the incident are being taken seriously at the legislative level.

The identity of the Secret Service agent who was shot has not been released. The exact location of the shooting beyond "in the vicinity" of the WHCA dinner has not been specified in public reporting. And the full scope of the charges against Cole Allen, including specific statutes, has not been detailed.

These are the questions that matter. A reporter's claim that the president called to check on him is, at most, a footnote. The attempted assassination of a sitting president, the wounding of a federal agent, and the prosecution of the man charged with both, that is the story.

Washington's press corps would do well to remember which one the public actually cares about.