President Trump is lashing out at ABC News — which paid his presidential library millions of dollars as part of a legal settlement — after a former DNC chairwoman, Donna Brazile, criticized him for canceling Secret Service protections for Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump says ABC News should be paying him even more after Ms. Brazile’s comments. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Harris is now being protected by the California Highway Patrol after Mr. Trump canceled her federal protective detail effective Monday. Typically, former vice presidents receive round-the-clock protection for six months immediately following their vice presidencies. President Biden, before leaving office, extended Ms. Harris’s protection to 18 months, though Mr. Trump has now cut that short. 

On Sunday, Ms. Brazile said on ABC News’s “This Week” that the president’s decision to cancel the protective detail was “petty” and “vindictive.”

“Before President Trump left office in 2021, he extended it for his five children and Joe Biden never rescinded it. Compare it to Donald Trump who rescinded [details for] the Biden children this past March,” Ms. Brazile said on a panel on Sunday. “Look, this is petty, it’s small, it’s vindictive, it’s retribution, but thankfully, Governor Newsom will step up, Mayor Bass of Los Angeles will step up and the vice president will continue to receive protection.”

Just hours after Ms. Brazile made the comments, Mr. Trump lashed out at her, ABC News, and a former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, a paid contributor to the network whom Mr. Trump says should also be investigated by federal prosecutors. 

“Why does Fake News ABC’S This Week With George Slopadopolus have Low IQ ‘commentator’ Donna Brazile on the show? Wasn’t she totally discredited when she gave Crooked Hillary Clinton the questions to a Debate??? Wasn’t she FIRED by Fake News CNN for so doing???” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “Donna is dumb as a rock, and a liar besides.”

“She, and Sloppy Chris Christie, should be fired from a highly discredited ABC Fake News. They just paid me $16,000,000 for ‘inaccurate’ reporting, now they should pay me more!!!” Mr. Trump wrote. 

Another member of the panel with Ms. Brazile, Reince Preibus — who served as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff during his first term — brushed off the cancellation of the protective detail for Ms. Harris, noting that she has received protection for two months longer than Mr. Biden did after leaving office in 2017 and Vice President Pence did in 2021. 

“The facts are [that] vice presidents get six months of coverage. That’s it,” Mr. Preibus said. “Here, you’ve got Kamala Harris who just signed a $20 million book deal, okay? And she’s running around the country talking about Donald Trump being a threat to democracy.”

“She can use $20 million of her own money to protect herself,” he said. 

ABC News settled a lawsuit with Mr. Trump back in December, when he was president-elect. Mr. Trump had sued the news organization and one of its star anchors, George Stephanopoulos, for defamation. Mr. Stephanopoulos had previously said during a broadcast that Mr. Trump had been found liable for rape, though he was found liable for sexual abuse against E. Jean Carroll.