Stepped in It: CBS’s Ed O’Keefe Asks If Trump Has Ever Been Falsely Accused of Racism

Curtis Houck
February 19th, 2026 2:59 PM

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Wednesday’s White House press briefing featured a wild detour away from reality when CBS senior White House and campaign correspondent Ed O’Keefe — who’s one of the least-expected elite media journalists to ask something crazy — wondered aloud to press Secretary Karoline Leavitt if President Trump has ever been falsely accused of being a racist.

Following a question about the administration’s efforts to remove markers on slavery from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, he expressed confusion over a portion of Trump’s Truth Social post on the passing of Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr. in which the President said he’s been “falsely and consistently called a racist by the scoundrels and lunatics on the radical left.”

O’Keefe then asked: “Where or when does the President believe he has been falsely called racist?”

Leavitt couldn’t believe it: “You’re kidding, right?”

Leavitt cut right to the chase by warning O’Keefe she would “pull you a plethora of examples” by having “my team...start going through the internet of radical Democrats throughout the years, Ed, who have accused this president falsely of being a racist on ensure there’s many people in this room and on network television across the country who have accused him of the same.”

She then segued this into previewing President Trump’s Black History Month event later that day that she said would “talk about how his policies are advancing opportunity and prosperity for all Americans through record tax cuts, through the Trump Accounts that all Americans can access, regardless of race.”

“There’s a lot this President has done for all Americans regardless of race and he has absolutely been falsely called and smeared as a racist and I am happy to provide you those receipts and we gladly will right after this briefing,” she later added.

Along with the various White House social media accounts posting a torrent of examples of liberals hurling racism charges at Trump, we have plenty of our own thanks to the vast NewsBusters archives.

Our Geoff Dickens posted the worst of Trump Derangement Syndrome from 2010-2019 as part of his worst of the decade notable quotables, highlighted by moments such as CNN’s Van James calling the 2016 election a “white-lash” by Trump and his voters against black Americans and then-ABC kook Terry Moran saying on Inauguration Day 2017 Trump has “neo-Nazi” tendencies.

Dickens also found that, in 2018, beloved liberal professor Michael Eric Dyson said on The View Trump is “a bigot-in-chief and a racist in residence” who “gets up every morning and excretes the feces of his moral depravity” on America.

By 2020, Joy Reid said the GOP was the modern-day apartheid party and pal Tiffany Cross asserted black Republicans speaking at the Republican National Convention were on par with a minstrel show.

Then-CNN host Chris Cuomo had one of the worst quotes of 2021 when he declared Trump has engaged in the “boldest attempt since the era of Jim Crow” to harm African-Americans and there’s a through line between Trump and the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.

And, just last year, there was PBS insisting Trump deployed “overtly racist rhetoric” in a speech about affordability, MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow comparing Trump’s America to Japanese internment, and The View’s Sunny Hostin lamenting Trump’s America is “sickened” by racism.

Needless to say, O’Keefe stepped in it.

As for the actual doo-doo being spewed by the hundreds of millions into the Potomac River, CBSNews.com’s Jennifer Jacobs and then Fox’s Peter Doocy had the questions about the federal government’s reaction to the destruction of a D.C. Water pipe:

Doocy’s second question was blunt in wondering if the President’s worried the various America 250 celebrations later this year on the National Mall will be ruined by an putrid Potomac stench:

Rewinding to the beginning of the briefing, Leavitt opened in part with a lengthy statement on the state of the economy and the Trump successes downplayed or ignored by the elite media:

Inside Sources scored the “new media seat,” sending managing editor Michael Graham to ask about energy prices in the blue-dominated Northeast and plans for an Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) facility in Leavitt’s home state of New Hampshire:

Later on, Beni Rae Harmony with our friends at Real America’s Voice and then Univision’s Pedro Rojas brought up two of the latest far-left lunacy in deep blue states vis-à-vis illegal immigration (click “expand”):

HARMONY: So, Governor JB Pritzer just recently signed the bill — the law went into effect in January that is supposedly going to allocate about $2.5 billion to illegals to go to college on financial aid in the state of Illinois. What is the White House’s reaction to this? Illinois is already, by 2027, they’re supposed to have a $3 billion deficit. What’s your reaction to that?

LEAVITT: Yeah, we’ll have to take a look at that. I would say the President certainly thinks that Governor Pritzker is not doing a very good job of managing his state as evidenced by not only the waste, fraud, and abuse but also the crime in the city of Chicago that, unfortunately, Governor Pritzker has refused to pick up the phone call — phone and called the White House and ask for help on, which is something his residents want him to do, but he refuses to do for political reasons. As for the specific money, we’ll take a look and get you an answer.

(....)

ROJAS: Governor Moore in Maryland said he was ending the law enforcement cooperation with ICE and, by doing that, a lot of local sheriffs are not happy about that. In fact, they met today in Annapolis to come up with legal action. What is the message of the White House to those sheriffs and to the residents of Maryland?

LEAVITT: Well, first of all, it’s another despicable action by Governor Moore. Why would you prevent your state and local law enforcement with cooperating with federal law enforcement? If you just ask them — to your point, if you ask sheriffs across the country if they want to have that level of cooperation and coordination with the federal government, of course they do. It makes their jobs easier, it keeps them out of hostile and dangerous environments. It allows them to detain criminals who have committed heinous crimes in our country with — with the most safe circumstances possible. So, the President, of course, continues to stand on the side of law enforcement and this is another just horrible and frankly political action taken by Governor Wes Moore, and unfortunately, the people of his state are going to reap the consequences of it.

To see the relevant transcript from the February 18 briefing, click here.

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