White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday eviscerated The New York Times’ Shawn McCreesh for asking why President Donald Trump did not take a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin in front of other European leaders.
Trump called Putin on Monday after his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders to set up a trilateral meeting involving both Putin and Zelenskyy. Leavitt did not mince words with McCreesh when he asked why Trump did not take the call while the other leaders were in the room.
“If the point is to get everybody on the same page, why wouldn’t Trump just take the call from Putin while the other leaders were in the room? He said it would be disrespectful to do that, but why is that disrespectful?” McCreesh asked.
“With all due respect, only a reporter from The New York Times would ask a question like that, Sean,” Leavitt replied. “The president met with all of these European leaders at the White House 48 hours after siting down with President Putin on American soil. In fact, there was so much progress in the readout that was given to these European leaders immediately following his meeting with President Putin, that every single one of them flew on a plane 48 hours later and flew to the United States of America.”
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Leavitt then read quotes from the European leaders who commended the progress made by Trump to end the war in Ukraine. Zelenskyy said he had a “very good conversation” with Trump, while North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Mark Rutte called Trump a “pragmatic peacemaker” and called the summit at the White House a “very successful day” during a Fox News interview.
“These leaders, who this war is in their backyard, are very grateful that this president took that call and that he was there to provide them with a readout of Russia’s thinking on this. [This is] something that was not done during the previous administration at all,” Leavitt continued.
Trump similarly called Zelenskyy at the end of his meeting with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. During that meeting, Trump met with Putin for three hours and expressed optimism that a deal could be reached to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine.
The president announced in May that peace negotiations would begin following a two-hour call with Putin, though the Russian president remained hesitant to engage with Ukraine. In July, Trump threatened to impose “severe” tariffs and sanctions on Russia if it did not come to the table within 50 days, though he later shortened that deadline to ten days on July 28.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump called for peace between Russia and Ukraine and argued that it “never would have happened” if former President Joe Biden were not in charge, a point confirmed by Putin during a post-summit press conference on Friday.
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