Leavitt Asks WH Press If They Would Like Being Harassed Like Feds in Minneapolis

Curtis Houck
January 26th, 2026 5:36 PM

Text to Speech

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During Monday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rhetorically asked a relatively simple question of the mostly libera, elite media gathered before her concerning what’s transpired in Minneapolis this month: How would you like it if people followed you everywhere you went, screamed, blew whistles, and recorded your every move?

Of course, to be clear, no one should be harassed in public and we have seen dangerous consequences (e.g. the mail bombs to CNN and elected/unelected Democrats). Even partisans like the White House press should be allowed to live in peace with their families.

The comments came in light of a reporter asking about reports from James O’Keefe and others that “local and state Minnesota officials are communicating with demonstrators to – to basically impede immigration officials.”

Leavitt first made clear it’s a concern and something “the FBI and the Department of Justice are looking into” because “it is illegal to unlawfully obstruct lawful immigration enforcement in this country” and oppose even “the worst of the worst” being removed from the country.

Then Leavitt deployed her thought exercise:

I would just encourage everyone to please imagine in this room, all of you come to the White House every day to report on the President of the United States and the administration. You come into this Briefing Room. You walk through the gates of the White House. Just imagine if there were left-wing agitators or agitators of any kind who were in your face, who were doxing you, who were harassing you, who were physically threatening you, who were biting off your fingers. In the case of a two Border Patrol agents we saw this past weekend in Minneapolis, that would make it very difficult for you to show up and do your job here at the White House every single day. That's what these officers in Minneapolis are facing.

A few minutes later, USA Today’s Francesca Chambers predictably pushed back on this with the left’s vapid assertion that those out on the streets of Minneapolis are merely exercising their First Amendment rights. Of course, Leavitt wasn’t having it:

Elsewhere, the briefing began with a question about the double standard between the left’s sympathies for Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but not Ashli Babbitt:

NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer later questioned whether the President believes the actions of Border Patrol on Saturday were a mistake and, regardless of that sentiment, whether he supports outfitting all federal law enforcement with body cameras:

Following her brief schooling of journalists about personal space, she also dropped this reality about other cities in which federal law enforcement has conducted immigration operations:

And, in one final highlight for the good of the order, Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann pressed Leavitt from the right about the Second Amendment:

 

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