Karoline Leavitt claimed Donald Trump was joking when he suggested in an interview that the U.S. should do away with the upcoming midterm elections.
The White House press secretary insisted the president was talking “facetiously” when he suggested he’d done such a good job in the Oval Office that the November ballot was unnecessary.
In a Reuters interview, Trump said: “It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms.”
The 79-year-old president added that he had achieved so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”
Leavitt said she attended Wednesday’s “closed-door” interview, but there was no audio or video.
“The president was simply joking,” she insisted. “He was saying, ‘We are doing such a great job, we are doing everything the American people thought. Maybe we should just keep rolling.’ But he was speaking facetiously.”
She was challenged by Andrew Feinberg, a reporter with The Independent, who said: “Americans for generations have fought and died for democracy, for this democracy. Are you saying that the president finds the idea of canceling elections funny?”
“Andrew, were you in the room?” Leavitt bit back. “No, you weren’t.”
“I was in the room. I heard the conversation, and only someone like you would take that so seriously and pose it as a question in that way.”
Earlier in the briefing, Leavitt claimed the media was “complicit” in the violence in Minnesota.
She held up a photo of a CNN headline, which read, “Protests Erupt After Federal Agent Shoots Man in Minneapolis.”
“That is not the story. That is not the truth,” she raged. “If you actually want to know the truth, you can look at what the Department of Homeland Security released, which is that this ICE agent was executing a targeted operation against a Venezuelan illegal immigrant who was unlawfully present in the country, who fled by car and then by foot.
“And when this ICE agent tried to detain this individual, three more of his comrades came rushing out of the house and started ambushing and attacking the ICE agent. They used a shovel or a broom to smash his face in.
“And so yes, that agent had to take up his weapon and use that weapon to protect his own life. That’s what’s happening on the streets of Minneapolis.”
With Trump’s approval ratings sinking, a growing unease over his handling of the Epstein files, his claims about an affordability “hoax”, and violent outbursts linked to ICE operations, the Republicans could face a backlash at the November elections.
It’s not the first time the president has talked about shelving the midterms. He told a GOP audience at the Kennedy Center last week that they should “cancel” the elections.
“You gotta win the midterms,” he continued. “Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
He also told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week: “If you go back a long way, the sitting president—whether it’s Democrat or Republican—always loses the midterm, even if they’ve done well. Almost always.”
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