Wednesday, December 31, 2025

White House rebuts legitimate question with juvenile insults

From Yahoo!News:

""Your Mom Did": Karoline Leavitt Had An Incredibly Sophomoric Response To A Very Simple Question About Trump

S.V. Date
After President Donald Trump touted yet another meeting with his benefactor/murderous dictator Vladimir Putin Thursday, this time in Budapest, HuffPost contacted his top spokespeople at the White House with an obvious question: Why Budapest?
 
After all, the Hungarian capital was the site of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine gave up the thousands of nuclear weapons it had inherited upon the breakup of the Soviet Union in return for assurances that Russia [and the USA and UK - M. M.] would respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. 
 
Putin broke that promise with his 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea, with his decade-long military offensive in the Donbas region, and then with his all-out invasion in 2022. He continues killing Ukrainian civilians in their homes to this day with regular drone and missile attacks. 
 
Given all that, HuffPost asked the White House: Who picked Budapest? 
 
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded minutes later with: “Your mom did.” 
 
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung after a minute added the far more succinct: “Your mom.”
 
After HuffPost asked Leavitt if she thought her response was funny, she replied: 
 
“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal [sic]. 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.” 
 
HuffPost is devastated, and is fearful of asking any more questions, let alone escalating with “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” or some such.
 
This article originally appeared on HuffPost."
 
***
 
On the same topic, from a report in the Daily Beast / Yahoo!News:
 
"White House Fires Off Childish Insults Over Trump’s Putin Summit
 
Tom Sanders
When asked whether the president is aware of the significance of Budapest in terms of Russia-Ukraine relations, CNAS transatlantic security analyst Jim Townsend told the HuffPost, “I’m sure Trump doesn’t know and doesn’t care.

“Trump likes Orban and probably thinks he’s doing him a solid,” he added. “Also, Putin is an Orban friend. Most of the world would not consider Budapest neutral ground for such a meeting, but I guess Trump and Putin do.”

Orban, a rightwing autocrat, has borrowed heavily from both Trump and Putin’s playbooks to dismantle much of Hungary’s democracy. Since the start of the war, Orban has used his position to delay military aid to Ukraine and act as a prominent pro-Russian voice in European politics..."

The meeting was ultimately called off.

No comments: