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Top White House officials told a reporter, “Your mom,” when asked who picked the location for President Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump announced Thursday that he will soon meet with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine. The choice has raised questions, because Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court. However, Hungary appears unlikely to cooperate with the warrant and is in the process of leaving the court, the Associated Press reports.
When HuffPost asked the White House who chose the location for the meeting, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt replied, “Your mom did.” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung also followed up with, “Your mom,” the outlet reports.
HuffPost then asked Leavitt if she thought her response was funny.
She responded: “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 bulls*** questions.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and White House Communications Director Steven Cheung both responded, ‘Your mom,’ when a reporter asked them who chose Budapest for President Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin (Getty Images)
When The Independent asked the White House if “your mom” was an appropriate answer, spokesperson Taylor Rogers responded that it was “more than appropriate.”
“The individual who received these texts is not a real reporter, they’re a Democrat activist. As a result, the response they received was more than appropriate,” Rogers said. “The White House press team fields and responds to hundreds of serious requests every day from actual reporters – we don’t have time to waste on partisan hacks!”
Cheung also re-shared an X post about the exchange on Friday afternoon, but did not share any additional comments.
The Independent has contacted HuffPost for comment.
The White House appears to have amped up its rhetoric in recent days. In a Thursday appearance on Fox News, Leavitt claimed that the Democratic Party’s “main constituency” is “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”
“They don’t stand for anything except for catering to their far-left base, which as I said, includes antisemites, includes Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals who they want to let off freely to roam in American streets,” Leavitt said.
