White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, one of President Donald Trump’s top liars, was especially rude when a reporter asked a straightforward question during Tuesday’s press briefing.
“If the point is to get everybody on the same page, why wouldn’t Trump just take the call from [Russian dictator Vladimir] Putin while the other leaders were in the room?” New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh asked, referring to Trump’s bizarre decision to interrupt a meeting with European leaders to call Putin. “He said it would be disrespectful to do that. But why is it disrespectful?”
“With all due respect, only a reporter from the New York Times would ask a question like that, Shawn. The president met with all of these European leaders at the White House 48 hours after sitting down with President Putin on American soil,” Leavitt replied. “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.”
It’s unclear what Leavitt means by “progress,” though. Trump dropped the prerequisite of a ceasefire for long-term peace talks, and he doesn’t plan to place higher sanctions on Russia. His language around security guarantees for Ukraine was vague, to say the least. And on Tuesday, he victim-blamed Ukraine for Russia’s unprovoked invasion.
Even Trump’s performative diplomacy was mostly a failure. Shortly after Monday’s meeting with European leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron told NBC News that he was not particularly optimistic about Putin’s willingness to pursue peace with Ukraine.
Leavitt is increasingly stumbling as she tries to keep the administration’s lies straight. She struggles with any question that comes from a media outlet that doesn’t make its money selling ad space to gold buyers and pillow makers.
