WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tore into the White House press corps on Tuesday afternoon, accusing the media of “negative and downright false coverage” of President Donald Trump and his efforts to bring peace between Russia and Ukraine.
Leavitt spoke from the James S. Brady Briefing Room podium, where she argued that “much of the left-wing media has been actively rooting against the president of the United States in the pursuit of peace” from the very beginning of Trump’s peace-making efforts.
“Initially, the media ridiculously claimed that President Trump was somehow beholden to Russia for even agreeing to have a face-to-face discussion with President Putin inside of the United States,” Leavitt argued. “The media said President Trump was making a grave mistake by, quote, ‘legitimizing’ Putin. They were aghast that President Trump would treat another world leader like a world leader.”
The White House press secretary accused the press of “relentlessly” attacking the president and claiming that he suffered a “major defeat” for not leaving that initial meeting with Vladimir Putin with a final agreement — “even though he said, heading into that meeting, this was a meeting to listen and to understand how to move the ball forward,” Leavitt argued.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 19, 2025. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Leavitt pointed to the pundits, hosts, reporters, and “so-called experts in the foreign policy establishment” who suggested over the weekend that the U.S.-Russia bilateral talks had been a failure, though President Trump “has solved seven global conflicts in seven months” and “brokered the Abraham Accords in his first term, on top of more than half a dozen other peace deals this year alone.”
And she reminded the press that the president of Ukraine and all the major leaders of Europe flew across the Atlantic to meet with Trump at the White House because of the progress that was made in that meeting with Putin.
“It was highly productive,” Leavitt said of the Trump and Putin meeting, “and it was successful.”
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“This is why Americans’ trust in the mass media is at a lowest point in more than five decades,” she said from the podium. “Diplomacy is a delicate process, and instead of reporting the facts about what is happening here at this White House and what is happening between this president and other leaders around the world, many outlets in this room continue to try to actively undermine the president and sabotage the efforts toward peace. That is why I felt the need to set the record straight.”
Leavitt’s remarks caused a stir not only in the briefing room, but among other members of the president’s administration. Vice President JD Vance was watching Leavitt’s briefing and posted approvingly on X in real time: “Karoline Leavitt lighting the American media up for lying about our negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.”
Karoline Leavitt lighting the American media up for lying about our negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) August 19, 2025
The White House press secretary was following up on a promise she had made during her very first briefing in January: to hold the press accountable.
“While I vow to provide the truth from this podium, we ask that all of you in this room hold yourselves to that same standard,” she told the assembled press in late January. “We know for a fact there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, about his family, and we will not accept that.”
“We will call you out when we feel that your reporting is wrong or there is misinformation about this White House,” she warned. “So, yes, I will hold myself to the truth, and I expect everyone in this room to do the same.”
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt holds her first official news briefing at the White House on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Leavitt has certainly held true to her promise, singling out reporters when she considers their questions unfair or duplicitous. On Tuesday, for example, a New York Times reporter questioned Leavitt: “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?”
The reporter was referring to Trump’s move to leave the room to take a private call from President Putin on Monday amid negotiations with European leaders.
“With all due respect,” responded Leavitt with a smile, “only a reporter from the New York Times would ask a question like that.”
A White House official reminded The Daily Wire that the president himself repeatedly called out the media and similar naysayers on Truth Social only a few days ago, reminding his critics: “Despite all of my lightweight and very jealous critics, I’ll get it done — I always do!!!”
“The president set the tone in his Truth Social posts over the past few days — we are not going to allow the left-wing legacy media to derail the progress made in this historic peace process,” the White House official told The Daily Wire. “President Trump has broken a three and a half year deadlock and the media wants you to believe that’s somehow actually a failure. Karoline, following the president’s lead, is cutting through their dishonest narrative and taking the truth directly to the American people.”
And Leavitt chimed in further at the end of the day on Tuesday.
“From the beginning of this process, much of the left-wing media has been actively rooting against the President of the United States in his pursuit of peace,” she argued. “President Trump finally broke the deadlock between Russia and Ukraine and created a real opportunity for a lasting peace for the first time in 3.5 years of brutal war.”
“But instead of accurately reporting the facts, dishonest outlets are actively trying to sabotage these peace efforts,” she concluded, reiterating her statement during the briefing: “This is why Americans’ trust in the mass media is at its lowest point in more than five decades.”
