In an entertaining incident that occurred during the Tuesday, August 19 White House Press Briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt scorched a New York Times reporter for asking a ridiculous question. She also got in a sparring match with an NBC reporter over much the same topic: finding a way to get Russia and Ukraine to agree to peace.
As background, the controversy began when President Trump met with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, for a peace summit on Friday, August 15. Though the two made no deal, it does appear that they at least established the potential basis for a potential peace. That led to President Trump meeting with Zelensky and European leaders on Monday, August 18, to discuss the potential for peace.
During the Monday meeting, the president reportedly called President Putin to discuss peace ideas. Asking him about that, FNC asked, “What was the reaction among European leaders when you decided to call Putin during your meeting?” The president responded by noting that he did not do the call in front of them, but in private, saying, “I didn’t do it in front of them. I thought that would be disrespectful to President Putin.”
It was that comment that led to Leavitt’s spat with New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh, who asked why it would have been disrespectful for the president to make a phone call while in a meeting with other people, an act that many find generally rude. He asked, “If the point is to get anybody on the same page, why wouldn’t Trump just take the call from Putin while the other leaders were in the room? Why is it disrespectful?”
Firing back, Leavitt snapped, “With all due respect, only a reporter from the New York Times would ask a question like that. Sean, the president, met with all of these European leaders at the White House 48 hours after sitting down with President Putin on American soil. In fact, there was so much progress in the readout that was given to these European leaders immediately following his meeting with President Putin that every single one of them got on a plane 48 hours later and flew to the United States of America.”
Continuing, she added, “And if I could just read for all of you some of the statements from those European leaders yesterday, you had President Zelensky himself saying it was a very good conversation. It was really good. We spoke about very sensitive points. The Secretary General Mark Ruda, it was the president, only because of the President that this deadlock was broken, but President Putin by starting a dialogue. So these leaders, who, this war is in their backyard, are very grateful that the President took that call and that he was there to provide them with a readout of Russia’s thinking on this, something that was not done by the previous administration at all.”
Watch her here:
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That wasn’t all. Leavitt also feuded with NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, who asked, in the wake of a hot mic comment from President Trump that he thinks Putin wants to make a deal with him, why he thinks that is the case. O’Donnell asked, “What has Trump learned that tells him that Putin would be willing to make a deal for him?”
Leavitt fired back, “Well, the President has learned a lot, which is part of the reason he opened up this dialogue. The previous administration, who oversaw the beginning of this war, refused to talk, and President Trump has always said, in order to learn, in order to move the ball forward with diplomacy and towards peace, you have to have open dialogue.”
O’Donnell didn’t let it go. Instead, the woke NBC reporter kept pressing Leavitt on the matter, asking, “What do you think Putin’s motivation is to do something for President Trump, as opposed to just resolving the conflict?” Leavitt snapped back, “I think, as I just spoke to in my opening remarks, Kelly, Russia and all countries around this world actually respect the United States again, and the President is using the might of American strength to demand that respect from our allies, our friends, our adversaries all around the world.”
Watch that here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video