Karoline Leavitt Blasts NY Times Reporter For Comparing Trump to Putin

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt crushed yet another attempt by the left to smear President Trump in a false comparison. According to the New York Post, Leavitt addressed New York Times reporter Peter Baker after he compared President Trump to Russian leader Vladimir Putin in regard to press freedoms.

In his apparent attempt to cry “dictator” alongside numerous others who do not support President Trump, Baker, a former Moscow correspondent, posted on X a statement claiming that the Trump administration’s changes to the press pool reflect “Kremlin tactics.” Baker did not appear to make the same comparison when former President Biden also made changes to the press pool under his administration.

“Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access,” Baker wrote.

Leavitt fired right back at Baker, writing, “Give me a break, Peter.”

“Moments after you tweeted this, the President invited journalists into the Oval and took questions for nearly an hour,” Leavitt added. “Your hysterical reaction to our long overdue and much-needed change to an outdated organization is precisely why we made it.”

“Gone are the days where left-wing stenographers posing as journalists, such as yourself, dictate who gets to ask what,” she continued, directing a harsh insult towards Baker.

When reached by The Post for a reaction to the exchange, Baker appears to have doubled down on his assertion referring to an article he wrote on Wednesday which “recalled the story of Yelena Tregubova, a former Kremlin pool reporter who was forced into exile from her native Russia after publishing a book detailing corruption and media censorship by the Putin regime.”

“The United States is not Russia by any means, and any comparisons risk going too far…But for those of us who reported there a quarter century ago, Mr. Trump’s Washington is bringing back memories of Mr. Putin’s Moscow in the early days,” he wrote.

A spokesperson for The Times shared a different statement from the paper with The Post that also appeared to support Baker’s suggestion writing, “The White House’s move to handpick favored reporters to observe the president — and exclude anyone whose coverage the administration may not like — is an effort to undermine the public’s access to independent, trustworthy information about the most powerful person in America.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association has been responsible for determining the media outlets that would have access to covering the president since the early 1990s, but Leavitt asserted that the “group of DC-based journalists” would no longer be able to “dictate” who gets to ask the president questions and who does not.

In the announcement on the change, Leavitt wrote, “Today, I was proud to announce that we are giving the power back to the people. Moving forward, the ‘White House Press Pool’ will be determined by the White House Press Team.” Leavitt reassured reporters that legacy outlets would not be excluded.