McCabe: I don't 'hate' Trump despite his attacks on my wife

FILE - In this June 7, 2017, file photo, then-FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe listens during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Associated Press)

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was asked during a television interview Tuesday if he “hates” President Trump, specifically regarding the president's repeated verbal attacks on McCabe's wife.

McCabe alleges that during a phone conversation, the president mocked Jill McCabe’s failed run for a Virginia state Senate seat, asking the then-top FBI official what’s it’s like for her to be a “loser.”

Trump denied that he said “anything bad” about Mrs. McCabe aside from her taking money from Clinton allies during her campaign.

McCabe called Trump’s tweet “absolutely false on so many counts.”

“We don’t have to go far to look at the horrendous, slanderous, and defamatory things that this president has said about my wife going back to October of 2016. There’s a long and illustrious history there,” McCabe told MSNBC's "The Last Word" host Lawrence O’Donnell. “He brought her up in his comments to the press conference he gave at the United Nations. I mean, think about it. Imagine you’re my wife driving home from work and that’s what you hear reported on the news. It’s just been utterly horrible.”

“Do you hate this guy?” O’Donnell asked.

“Wow, that’s a really tough question,” McCabe responded. “I’m going to have to say no. I didn’t think about it that way. I really hated the things he said about my wife, I’m not gonna lie to you. That is incredibly hard to hear, that’s incredibly hard not to react to in the way that any man wants to defend his wife. But honestly, in that moment, I couldn’t give myself the luxury in wallowing in that kind of hate. I had a job and 37,000 employees I was responsible for, whose job is to protect America and to uphold the Constitution. I couldn’t afford to get into an insult-trading match with the president of the United States.”