President Donald Trump won’t stop fawning over White House press secretary in the creepiest way possible.
Speaking to a gaggle of reporters on Air Force One after departing Egypt Tuesday, Trump asked, “How’s Karoline doing? Is she doing good? Should Karoline be replaced?”
As the journalists on board began to lightly protest, Trump cut them off. “It’ll never happen,” he said.
A smile slowly spread across the president’s face as he continued to muse over the questions from the press. “That face, those [inaudible], and those lips. They move like a machine gun, right?” he said.
The president, who has a tendency to repeat comments he considers to be clever, was rehashing a remark he’d made in August during an interview with Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty. Speaking about Leavitt, Trump remarked: “She’s become a star. It’s that face. It’s that brain. It’s those lips, the way they move. They move like she’s a machine gun.”
Setting aside that it’s a strangely sexual remark, it feels particularly inappropriate when directed at the 28-year-old Leavitt, the White House’s youngest press secretary to date.
Those outside of Trump’s world know that Leavitt isn’t doing so hot. Since the beginning of the month, she’s struggled to defend Trump’s outlandish claims about Democratic cities, publicly seethed over bad polls, and offered weak excuses for the president’s gleeful efforts to sack essential federal workers.
It’s clear from many of Trump’s remarks about the women around him that the most important thing they have to offer is their appearance—and this extends beyond his (mostly blonde) inner circle. Speaking about Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Monday, the U.S. president called her “a beautiful young woman.”
“Now if you use the word ‘beautiful’ in the United States about a woman, that’s the end of your political career, but I’ll take my chances,” Trump said of Meloni.
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