The White House has laughed off a blunder in which hotel guests walked away with detailed Trump administration plans for hosting Vladimir Putin after a MAGA aide left them sitting in a printer.
“It’s hilarious that NPR is publishing a multi-page lunch menu and calling it a ‘security breach’,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told NewsNation. “This type of self-proclaimed ‘investigative journalism’ is why no one takes them seriously and they are no longer taxpayer-funded thanks to President Trump.”
NPR, which lost federal funding under Trump’s May executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” reported Saturday that documents had been discovered on a public printer at roughly 9 a.m. Saturday by guests at Hotel Captain Cook, situated about 20 minutes away from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, where Trump had met with Putin only the day before.
The papers—totaling eight pages, and produced by the Office of the Chief of Protocol, Monica Crowley, who’s been at the post less than three months—contained what appear to have been precise locations and meeting time schedules for Friday’s summit, phone numbers of at least three U.S. government workers, and seating charts for a diplomatic lunch that in the end did not take place.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for further comment on the gaffe, as well as clarity on why the lavish meal—which would have featured, among other dishes, filet mignon with “brandy peppercorn sauce” and “buttery whipped potatoes and roasted asparagus”—seems to have been abruptly canceled.
Trump had trumpeted his meeting with Putin as an opportunity to finally bring an end to Russia’s vicious three-year war on Ukraine, telling reporters ahead of time he believed “we’re pretty close to a deal” for a ceasefire.
Nearly five months into Trump’s presidency—despite his Day One promise to end the conflict within 24 hours—no deal has materialized
Critics have now hit out at Putin’s highly ceremonious reception for serving only to legitimize the Russian tyrant’s standing on the world stage, with one White House insider later summarizing the outcome of the summit in a single word: “F–ked.”
It’s hardly the first time the Trump White House has faced backlash for breaches to informational security, with Alaska-Hotel-Printergate following just months after one of the president’s least-favorite journalists was added, completely by accident, to a Signal group chat in which top cabinet members discussed sensitive plans for military attacks on Yemen.
“It strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration,” UCLA professor and national security lecturer Jon Michaels told NPR Saturday. “You just don’t leave things in printers. It’s that simple.”
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