The White House press secretary is finding a lot of humor in international discord.
Karoline Leavitt doubled down Monday on a remarkably perverse response she gave a HuffPost reporter who inquired why the White House had chosen Budapest as the location for forthcoming ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
In a concise text exchange, Huffpost’s S.V. Dáte underscored the historical significance of the city as it relates to Ukraine-Russia relations, asking: “Who suggested Budapest?”
Leavitt had a three-word answer: “Your mom did.”
Fascinatingly, Leavitt seemed to believe that sharing the larger text exchange with her X followers would win her some public grace. Her continued response to Dáte, when pressed to explain whether she thought the situation was funny, reads as follows:
“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal,” Leavitt said, according to a screenshot she posted to her social media. “You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and bullshit questions.”
In her caption, Leavitt suggested that Dáte should not be addressed or conversed with as a legitimate member of the press on the basis that she believed his social media feeds amount to an “anti-Trump personal diary.”
“Activists who masquerade as real reporters do a disservice to the profession,” the 28-year-old press secretary—who has never held down a full-time job in the media industry—wrote on X.
Whether or not the Trump administration is taking the proceedings seriously, the location choice will not be lost on Russia and Ukraine’s leadership. In 1994, Budapest was chosen as the site in which America and the U.K. agreed to defend Ukraine’s borders in exchange for its surrender of nuclear weapons.
Thirty-one years later, it appears that the Budapest Memorandum has not worked out well for Ukraine. During a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday, Donald Trump reportedly tossed Zelenskiy’s maps of the battlefield in the air while insisting that the foreign leader cede portions of Ukraine-controlled eastern Donbas to Russia.
European governments rushed to Zelenskiy’s defense, alarmed by Trump’s trust that Russian President Vladimir Putin would end his assault on Ukraine after claiming some portions of the country for Russia.
“We see President Trump’s efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, all these efforts are welcome but we don’t see Russia wanting peace,” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, told the Financial Times on Monday. “We are discussing what more we can do.”
The European Commission suggested over the weekend that Ukraine could use a $163 billion reparations loan, bankrolled by frozen Russian assets, to buy arms abroad in their ongoing fight.
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