White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clashed with CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday during a heated exchange at a press conference alongside Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The confrontation escalated when Collins cited remarks made by President Donald Trump last month, which she claimed had “undermined” Gabbard.
During the briefing, Gabbard addressed the press about newly released documents, accusing former President Barack Obama and members of his administration of misleading the public regarding intelligence related to Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election.
Collins asked Gabbard to offer a response to individuals who are theorizing that “you’re only releasing these documents now to improve your standing with the president after he said that your intelligence assessments were wrong.” Leavitt later defended Gabbard, forcefully pushing back against Collins’s line of questioning.
“Who is saying that? That she would release this to try to boost her standing with the president? Who has said that?” Leavitt asked the CNN reporter. “The president has publicly undermined her when it came to Iran,” Collins responded. “He said she was wrong. He told me that she didn’t know what she was talking about. That was on Air Force One, on camera.”
Collins was referencing a now weeks-old statement from Trump that he made in response to the intelligence community’s assessment that there was no evidence Iran was close to developing a nuclear weapon—a conclusion the president publicly disagreed with at the time. “My intelligence community is wrong. She’s wrong,” he said.
However, Leavitt pushed back, telling Collins that the president’s confidence in Gabbard had never wavered and accused the media of falsely suggesting otherwise. “The only people who are suggesting that the director of national intelligence would release evidence to try to boost her standing with the president are the people in this room, who constantly try to sow distrust and chaos amongst the president’s Cabinet, and it is not working,” Leavitt went on to say.
“I am with the president of the United States every day. He has the utmost confidence in Director Gabbard. He always has; he continues to. And that is true of his entire Cabinet, who are all working as one team to deliver on the promises this president made,” the press secretary said, ending the exchange.
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