S.V. Dáte Thinks the White House Press Corps Should Hand In Their Badges, Too
The day after the Pentagon press corps left the corridors of the Defense Department rather than sign on to restrictive new reporting rules, things got weird across the Potomac.
On October 16, S.V. Dáte, HuffPost’s senior White House correspondent, asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt who had suggested the Hungarian capital, Budapest, as a venue for a meeting between President Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss the war in Ukraine. She texted back: “Your mom did.”
Dáte previously worked for the AP, the Palm Beach Post, NPR, and National Journal, and has written several books, including one about Donald Trump’s autocratic tendencies in his first term. “Is this funny to you?” he texted back in an exchange Leavitt later posted on X.
“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal [sic],” Leavitt replied. “You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and bullshit questions.”
On Monday, Dáte asked the Pentagon about the red, white, and blue striped tie Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wore to a White House meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. When Dáte pointed out that the Russian state news agency TASS had praised the tie because its pattern matched the Russian flag, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell replied: “Your mom bought it for him—and it’s a patriotic American tie, moron.”T
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