During a briefing Monday afternoon otherwise dominated by probing questions about the weekend deportation flights of dangerous illegal immigrants who belong to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA), White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took a moment to zing the French after a French member of the European Parliament demanded the U.S. return the Statue of Liberty.
Fox’s Peter Doocy had cued her up: “There is now a member of the European Parliament from France who does not think the U.S. represents the values of the statue of Liberty anymore. They want the statue of Liberty back. So, is President Trump going to send the Statue of Liberty back to France?”
Leavitt fired back at MEP member Raphaël Glucksmann of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats: “Absolutely not. And my advice to that unnamed, low-level French politician would be to remind them that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now, so they should be very grateful to our great country.”
At least Doocy didn’t lecture Leavitt about the Statue of Liberty like then-CNN carnival barker Jim Acosta did to Stephen Miller in August 2017.
Moments earlier, Doocy Time commenced with this substantive question even Leavitt said was “a very good question” that “the courts and people on the left” should explain: “If you guys can’t send 200 Tren de Aragua terrorists at a time to El Salvador, where you going to send them instead?”
“And if these guys are terrorists at war with the United States, is President Trump considering anything more lethal to address them than just sticking them on a plane somewhere,” Doocy also wondered, to which Leavitt said “sounded like...curiosity in the premise of your question” and thus expounded on how TdA is “a foreign terrorist organization” with a heinous track record “if you want to have that argument.”
The only reporter prior to Doocy was the “new media seat” recipient, which went to NewsNation and one of their White House correspondents, Kellie Meyer.
She cut to the chase with a simple question outlining the opposition to the deportation flights with Leavitt defly explaining the stakes of not removing dangerous illegal aliens:
Meyer followed up with another question from the left: “Does the President, you know, does this allow him to defy the court order without having this — the checks and balances and the separation of power?”
Leavitt calmly hit back that they don’t have concerns since “this administration acted within the confines of the law” and “are quite confident in that and we are wholly confident we’re are going to win this case in court.”
Following Doocy, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell picked up on Meyer’s line of questioning:
CBS’s Ed O’Keefe went in a slightly different direction with an entirely fair question about specifics on those deported:
In a follow-up, O’Keefe wondered whether there was any “criteria” used “other than, say, tattoos, or maybe being in the wrong place at the wrong time” to determine gang membership. Leavitt replied the administration relied on the “[i]ntelligence and the men and women on the ground in the interior of our country who are finally being allowed to do their jobs” with more details to come as the court challenges proceed.
Immediately after 2023 MRC Bulldog Award winner Mary Margaret Olohan of the Daily Wire took notice of a White House video on deportations being set to Semisonic’s Closing Time, Elizabeth Mitchell with our friends at the Daily Signal had a policy question each on Russia and the revamp Customs and Border Patrol app for illegal aliens:
Fox Business’s Edward Lawrence continued to show his tough lines of questioning about the economy wasn’t changing simply because a Republican administration was now in office:
Elsewhere, Las Vegas Review Journal columnist Debra Saunders had a thought-provoking question about run rights and then Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese wondered when President Trump will get moving on filling over three dozen vacancies on the federal judiciary:
The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski closed out the briefing by reasking one of O’Keefe’s queries: “I wanted to ask if you would release more granular data about the people who were sent to El Salvador this week, particularly will you be releasing their names?”
Leavitt wrapped with a Kayleigh McEnany-esque closing statement on this (click “expand”)
I don’t believe so because of the privacy concerns at this point in time. That does not mean we will not eventually. I would refer you to the Department of Homeland Security for more details on the individuals on the flight. But we have been incredibly transparent and giving you the breakdown of the numbers and also some of the crimes committed by these heinous criminals and individuals. Kidnapping, sexual abuse of a child, robbery, aggravated assault on a police officer. I would remind everybody in this room that Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization operating within the United States of America because the previous administration allowed them to invade our country. These are monsters who tortured, raped, and murdered a 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray. They murdered 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley. They led a multi-sex — state sex trafficking operation involving smuggling women into the United States, holding them in stash houses in Louisiana, Florida, New Jersey, Texas, and Virginia and forcing them into prostitution and they kidnapped and murdered a 33-year-old woman in Texas. They sexually and physically assaulted a woman and her daughter in Wisconsin. They conducted a mass shooting in Illinois. They peddled untraceable ghost guns across New York City. Took over an Aurora, Colorado apartment complex where they kidnapped and tortured victims and, by the way, many of you in the mainstream media said that didn’t happen. It turned out that it did and because of the effective immigration policies of this administration, those foreign terrorists were detained and they are no longer operating on American soil and we have President Trump to thank for that.
To see the relevant transcript from the March 17 briefing (including even more questions), click here.
