White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt publicly confronted a HuffPost correspondent on social media after a contentious text message exchange regarding President Trump’s planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The incident began when HuffPost correspondent S.V. Date sent Leavitt a series of questions via text message last week.
Date inquired whether President Trump understood the historical significance of Budapest as the proposed location for upcoming peace talks with Putin.
Date’s text message asked if Trump was aware of why Ukraine might object to the Hungarian capital as a meeting site.
He questioned who had suggested Budapest as the venue for the talks scheduled to take place in the coming weeks.
The reporter referenced the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, an agreement signed in the city where Ukraine agreed to surrender nuclear weapons it had inherited from the former Soviet Union.
In exchange, Russia promised not to use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.
Leavitt’s initial response to Date’s question was “Your mom did.”
The exchange quickly escalated from there.
Date responded by asking if Leavitt found the situation funny. The press secretary fired back with a message questioning Date’s journalistic credentials.
“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal,” Leavitt wrote, apparently cutting off the word “journalist.”
She called Date “a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face.”
Leavitt concluded her text exchange with Date by instructing him to stop sending her questions.
“Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and bulls–t questions,” she wrote.
The confrontation became public after HuffPost published a story about the White House’s response to Date’s questions.
Leavitt then shared screenshots of the Oct. 17 text exchange on X.
In her social media post, Leavitt provided context for her response.
“For context, S.V. Dáte of the Huffington Post is not a journalist interested in the facts,” she wrote.
She described Date as “a left-wing hack who has consistently attacked President Trump for years and constantly bombards my phone with Democrat talking points.”
Leavitt included the text message screenshots as evidence.
Leavitt continued her criticism by directing people to examine Date’s social media presence.
“Just take a look at [Date’s] feed, it reads like an anti-Trump personal diary,” she stated.
The press secretary argued that journalists who she views as activists harm their profession.
“Activists who masquerade as real reporters do a disservice to the profession,” Leavitt wrote.
Despite the public dispute, Date attempted to continue pursuing his original question.
He responded to Leavitt’s X post by asking again about the Budapest summit.
“Feel better now? Now can you answer the question? Please and thank you,” Date tweeted in the same thread where Leavitt had posted the screenshots.
The approach Leavitt took with Date appears to be spreading to other Trump administration officials.
A statement from Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell to Date echoed Leavitt’s confrontational tone.
In a HuffPost article published Monday evening, Date wrote about the red, white and blue tie worn by War Secretary Pete Hegseth during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent White House visit.
Parnell’s statement responding to Date’s inquiry read: “Your mom bought it for him — and it’s a patriotic American tie, moron.”
