White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shut down CNN’s Kaitlain Collins on Wednesday, during her high-stakes press briefing defending the use of administration officials using Signal to communicate about a military strike.
Collins questioned Leavitt about whether the president felt ‘misled’ by his national security advisors who said that there was no classified information shared in the Signal chat.
‘I’ve now been asked and answered this question three times by the both of you, and I’ve given you my answer, the president feels the same today as he did yesterday,’ Leavitt responded.
Collins tried to ask a followup question, but was immediately shut down by Leavitt in seven words: ‘Kaitlin, I’m not taking your follow up.’
Collins repeated that she had a followup question, but Leavitt did not allow her to interrupt.
‘Kaitlin, I’m not taking your followup,’ she said again firmly before moving to RealClearPolitics reporter Philip Wegman.
Leavitt said that President Trump had reviewed the text messages sent in the chat, published by The Atlantic magazine after editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to the chat.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attends a press briefing at the White House
Kaitlan Collins, chief White House correspondent for CNN
She dismissed The Atlantic article as ‘word games’ and ‘sensational spin’ by an editor that she described as an ‘anti-Trump sensationalist reporter.’
Leavitt said that the president continued to have ‘great trust’ in his national security team, despite the ongoing controversy surrounding their use of the Signal app to communicate about a military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
‘We are not going to be lectured about national security and American troops by democrats and the mainstream media who turned the other cheek when the Biden administration because of their incompetence left 13 service members dead in Afghanistan and not a single person in the previous administration was held accountable for that botched withdrawal,’ she said.
