Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took a victory lap during Tuesday’s White House briefing, claiming that President Donald Trump has been right all along about deporting illegal aliens.
The press briefing was chock-full of news, including a market-moving update that the U.S. and China are closer to a trade deal and an announcement that 5 million student loan borrowers will soon pay up.
Though the first question asked during the briefing, posed by conservative commentator Tim Pool, was about how the White House and Trump have reacted to media coverage lambasting the administration over its accidental deportation of ‘Maryland man’ Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who entered the U.S. illegally.
‘Many of these organizations that are represented in this room have marched in lockstep on false narratives, such as the very fine people hoax, the Covington smear, and now what’s being called the Maryland man hoax, where an MS 13 gang member adjudicated by two different judges, I believe, is just simply being referred to as a Maryland man over and over again,’ Pool began his question.
Pool, who was occupying the new media seat, asked if as a result of the mainstream media’s recent coverage, ‘If there’s any plans to expand access to new [media] companies?’
Loving the question Leavitt took the opportunity to take on Trump’s media detractors head-on.
‘You rightfully pointed out the Maryland man story, which I from this podium when the Atlantic published it on that very first day, I came to this podium and said, this is wrong,’ the press secretary claimed.
‘The press in this room have this story wrong, and we have seen more and more evidence come to the table that we have had all along.’
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt ripped into the ‘despicable’ media coverage about President Donald Trump’s deportation plansĀ
Trump posted a picture of him holding up a picture of deported Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s alleged MS-13 tattoos last week, though many reports refer to the removed migrant as a ‘Maryland man’ or ‘Maryland father’ despite him not being a U.S. citizenĀ
Leavitt, 27, then proclaimed: ‘We were always right.’
‘The President was always on the right side of this issue to deport this illegal, criminal from our community.’
Leavitt and Trump have remained firm that despite Abrego Garcia getting deported due to an ‘administrative error,’ that the migrant should have not been in the U.S. in the first place.
The Salvadoran man, who has an American wife and child, has been the center of the Trump administration’s latest controversy after theĀ Supreme Court ruled that the White House must ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s returnĀ to the U.S. because his due process rights were infringed.
The Supreme Court’s ruling has fueled media coverage that Abrego Garcia, dubbed a ‘Maryland father,’ could be the first of many individuals wrongly deported.
The migrant has since been held in El Salvador andĀ met with Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen last weekĀ after the lawmaker traveled to Central America to check on the man’s well-being.
‘The President was always on the right side of this issue to deport this illegal, criminal from our community,’ Leavitt said on Tuesday.
‘And it is despicable to see the media continue to refer to this individual as someone who is just a peaceful man living his life in Maryland.’
Conservative commentator Tim Pool in the new media seat on Tuesday
Leavitt noted how many journalists who spun the Abrego Garcia story were in the White House briefing room on TuesdayĀ
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., meeting with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador last week.
‘This is the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that the courts are trying to save from being deported?’ Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.
Attached to the post was a picture of the president holding a picture of Abrego Garcia’s gang-related tattoos.
‘He was supposed to be, according to the judge and the Democrats, a wonderful father from Maryland, but then they noticed he had ‘MS-13′ tattooed onto his knuckles (and lots of really bad stories about his past!),’ the post continued.
‘This is the gang that is, perhaps, the worst of them all. What is wrong with our Country?’
In another post on the matter, Trump pointed out how easily migrants were able to enter the U.S. under the previous administration and now difficult they are to remove now.
‘How can Biden let millions of criminals into our country, totally unchecked and unvetted, with no legal authority to do so, yet I, in order to make up for this assault to our Nation, am expected to go through a lengthy legal process, separately, for each and every Criminal Alien,’ Trump posted on Monday.
‘As usual, two different standards, only leading to the complete and total destruction of the U.S.A.’
