Karoline Leavitt, a recently appointed White House press minister, reacted to a New York Times reporter who had compared Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump.
Leavitt called blogger Peter Baker a “left-wing translator” after he drew similarities between Trump’s handling of media exposure and Putin’s internet prosecutions.
After senior reporter and past Moscow journalist Peter Baker criticized the government’s decision to impose control over the White House press corps and forbid Associated Press writers from significant activities, including exposure to the Oval Office and Air Force One, the discussion broke on X.
The situation is escalating as a result of the Trump administration’s growing conflict with internet. Just last week, AP reporters were removed from the president’s journey to Mar-a-Lago and Miami after refusing to use the White House’s recommended name,” Gulf of America”, instead of the Gulf of Mexico.
Baker took to social media on Tuesday to show his fears, likening the Trump administration’s move to Kremlin techniques.
This reminds me of how the Kremlin took control of its own hit apparatus and made certain only compliant reporters had access, he wrote on X.
Leavitt soon fired up with a villain emoji, followed by a sharpened rebuttal.
” Give me a break, Peter”, she responded.
She pointed out that “moments after” Baker’s X article, Trump had invited reporters into the Oval Office for nearly an hour of issues. Leavitt dismissed Baker’s issues as “hysterical” and defended the White House’s choice as a needed shift to an outdated system.
She therefore took a direct shot at Baker and the wider internet environment, posting on X she said,” Gone are the days where left-wing reporters posing as editors, such as yourself, determine who gets to ask what”.
For decades, the White House Correspondents ‘ Association ( WHCA ) has determined press access, deciding which journalists could cover the president most closely. But, that changed earlier this week when Leavitt announced that the presidency would now have complete control over the collection process.
” A group of DC-based editors, the White House Correspondents ‘ Association, has long dictated which editors get to ask questions of the President of the United States. No again”, Leavitt said.
She called the move a step towards justice.
” Today, I was pleased to announce that we are giving the energy back to the people”, she said. ” Moving ahead, the’ White House Press Pool’ may be determined by the White House Press Team”.
Kind reaffirmed that conventional outlets would not be excluded, but he insisted that entry decisions would now be left with the administration.
Baker responded with another strong analysis, suggesting the shift was designed to silence strong doubting.
Every leader of both parties, going back through the generations, he wrote,” Everyone subscribed to the tenet that a leader doesn’t get the press corps that is permitted in the room to inquire questions.” Trump has only made his intentions known.
He vowed that the profession may remain as it was.
None of this will prevent expert media outlets from covering this president in the same comprehensive, impartial, and unflinching manner that we have always done. Separate journalism won’t be stopped by government efforts to condemn oppressed organizations, according to Baker.
By no means is the United States a Russian state, and comparisons to Russia “raise the bar” for those of us who reported there a fourth of a century ago, but Mr. Trump’s Washington is reassuring to those who reported there in the first 1990s,” Baker wrote.
A New York Times director also criticised the White House’s innovative approach.
The White House’s decision to select favored reporters to observe the president and to exclude those whose coverage the administration might not like is an attempt to restrict the general public’s access to reliable, impartial information about the most powerful person in the world, according to a statement from the newspaper.
