White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tore into CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a Thursday briefing over her network’s failure to press former President Joe Biden about poor economic indicators while he was in office.
“With respect to affordability, every economic metric, Kaitlan, and I wish you would report more on it, does in fact show that the economy is getting better and brighter than where it was under the previous administration,” Leavitt shot back when pressed by Collins about President Trump’s economy.
“I will repeat, inflation as measured by the overall CPI has slowed to an average 2.5% pace. Real wages are increasing roughly $1,200 for the average worker. Gas prices are down in almost every single state across the country,” added Leavitt.
“There’s a lot more scrutiny on this issue from this press than there was,” she went on. “My predecessor stood up at this podium and she said inflation doesn’t exist.”
Asked later about a potential move by the president to force new ownership of CNN, Leavitt took Collins to task again.
“I think the president’s comments yesterday about the sale of CNN and new leadership is evidenced by my exchange with a CNN reporter in this room,” she said.
“Their viewership has gone down. Their ratings have declined, and I think the president rightfully believes that network would benefit from new ownership with respect to this deal,” Leavitt added.
“He has great respect for both companies who are bidding against one another, and I won’t weigh in any further.”
Trump told reporters Wednesday that “any deal, it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately.”
“But I don’t think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don’t think that should be allowed to continue,” he added.
The Post’s Charles Gasparino scooped Wednesday that the president wants the ownership change to be conditional on the sale of its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.
Trump has previously called for CNN’s bias to be “neutralized” and favored Paramount Skydance in the competition with Netflix for the sale of Warner Bros.
Netflix last week agreed to buy Warner Bros. studio and its streaming service HBO Max without that condition, bypassing a bid from Paramount Skydance for all of WBD.
Those negotiations were complicated by a “60 Minutes” interview with former MAGA darling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who claimed Republicans mock Trump behind his back.
Paramount Skydance’s executives said privately that the CBS News program’s staffers didn’t give them a heads up about the explosive interview — but Trump tore into the company, declaring their management “NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP.”
Paramount Skydance has since engaged in a “hostile bid” to undo the Netflix deal.
