Wednesday afternoon’s White House press briefing was a fun one as Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wasn’t having it with liberal journalists at Agence France-Presse (AFP), The New York Times, NOTUS, and Reuters trying to trap the Trump administration with questions about President Trump’s ironclad commitment to restoring law and order in Los Angeles following riots last weekend.
Reuters’s Nandita Bose wondered aloud whether the President’s decision to send in the National Guard and Marines to the city of angels wasn’t to restore order, but a distraction from last week’s verbal tussle with Elon Musk:
Moments later, AFP’s Danny Kemp was curious/incredulous that Trump would suggest some in the crowd would be paid to cause chaos:
The clip most circulated moment on the interwebs after the briefing was this from NOTUS’s Jasmine Wright asking if Trump finds any kind of protest “acceptable.” Leavitt ripped this line of questioning, exclaiming “what a stupid question’ at the end of her answer:
However, the dumbest line of questioning was from Deep State reporter David Sanger of The Times with the ludicrous wonderment about where in Trump’s First Amendment “hierarchy of interests” does he place “protect[ing]...peaceful protesters” compared to “stopping violence” (and the implicit thought being the left views the former as paramount to the latter):
Sanger followed up and thus gave Leavitt the chance to ask him if he thinks rioting is “appropriate behavior” (click “expand”):
SANGER: You’re saying the majority have not been peaceful? The majority have been.
LEAVITT: I just read for you the arrest numbers. We’ve arrested nearly 400 illegal aliens alone, just illegal aliens who have been arrested in these riots since June 6 —
SANGER: But the balance of people on the streets —
LEAVITT: — yeah and we’ve had hundreds of people who have assaulted law enforcement officers. Are you saying that that’s not — that’s appropriate behavior? Are you saying —
SANGER: No, I’m saying that at all.
LEAVITT: — the President shouldn’t take action?
SANGER: I’m just trying to figure out — yeah.
LEAVITT: The Democrat — the Democrat governor and the Democrat mayor of Los Angeles have failed their citizens and the majority of Americans, the majority of Californians, do not want to see law enforcement officers being assaulted in the streets. And thankfully, the President took action and stepped in to protect our federal law enforcement agents, to protect federal buildings, to protect the federal mission of deporting illegal criminals off our streets, and that mission will continue every day as far as we’re concerned.
Earlier, Alexandria Hoff was in the Fox News seat:
In today’s example of how many conservative reporters aren’t there to simply roll over and lob softballs, EWTN’s Owen Jensen brought up the plight of Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong media executive and wrongfully imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party:
On a much more positive note, our friends at the Daily Signal were in the “new media” seat:
To see the relevant transcript from the June 11 briefing, click here.
