Fact check: Democratic leaders misleadingly snip White House press secretary’s ‘main priority’ quote out of context
By Daniel Dale, CNN
(CNN) — Top Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives have taken a Thursday quote from the White House press secretary out of context to deliver a misleading attack on President Donald Trump.
A reporter asked press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a Thursday briefing: “In addition to the ballroom and the Rose Garden patio, is the president looking at any other renovations or significant kind of projects here at the White House?”
Leavitt responded: “Not to my knowledge, no. But he’s a builder at heart, clearly. And so his heart and his mind is always churning about how to improve things here on the White House grounds. But at this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president’s main priority.”
So Leavitt was clearly referring to the planned new ballroom as Trump’s main priority for White House renovations. But on social media, various Democratic members of Congress have cut out the first part of the exchange to make it sound like she was saying the ballroom was Trump’s overall main priority.
The House Democratic Caucus’s official account on the social media platform X posted a five-second clip of Leavitt saying only, “At this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president’s main priority.” The Democrats wrote in the Thursday post: “So, Trump’s MAIN priority is a $300 MILLION ballroom? Not lowering costs. Not saving health care. Not reopening the government. Got it.”
By clipping out the question Leavitt was asked about White House renovations, the Democrats created a misleading impression about her response.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also posted the truncated five-second clip on X on Thursday and used it as the basis for an anti-Trump message similar to the House Democrats’ tweet. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made an X post on Friday that did not include any video but still snipped the exchange in the same way the five-second clip did.
Schumer wrote: “‘At this moment in time of course, the ballroom is really the president’s main priority.’ It’s hard to wrap your mind around it because of how callous it is. But that’s what White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt actually said. Out loud. To press. Proudly.”
A White House account responded, “This has already been debunked, Chuck,” going on to criticize Schumer and post the context of Leavitt’s remark. The White House wrote in a Thursday response to another Democrat: “She was answering a question specifically about construction projects on the White House grounds.”
Leavitt also used the phrase “main priority” at another moment of the same Thursday briefing. After she was asked about Trump’s thinking on H-1B visas, she said, “The president’s main priority has always been to put American workers first and also to strengthen our visa system.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
