Karoline Leavitt Shuts Down Reporter Asking If Trump Thinks Canceling Elections Is ‘Funny’: ‘Were You in the Room?’

Karoline Leavitt Shuts Down Reporter Asking If Trump Thinks Canceling Elections Is ‘Funny’: ‘Were You in the Room?’

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shut down a reporter on Thursday for asking whether President Donald Trump believes the idea of “canceling elections” is “funny.”

At a fiery press conference, Leavitt clashed with multiple reporters, including The Independent’s White House Correspondent Andrew Feinberg, who followed up on Leavitt saying the president was “joking” when he told Reuters in an interview that “we shouldn’t even have an election” in reference to the midterms.

In the Reuters interview, published shortly before the press conference, Trump acknowledged Republicans could perform poorly in the midterm elections and cracked that he’s accomplished so many already that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

Leavitt explained on Thursday that she was present when the president made his comment, and it was clear he was “joking.”

After Leavitt first addressed the comment during the press conference, Feinberg followed up by asking if the “idea of canceling elections” was what the president found to be humorous, saying, “Americans for generations have fought and died for democracy.”

“You said he was joking about canceling the elections, but Americans for generations have fought and died for democracy, for this democracy. Are you saying that the president finds the idea of canceling elections funny?” Feinberg asked.

“Andrew, were you in the room? No you weren’t. I was in the room. I heard the conversation, and only someone like you would take that so seriously and pose a question in that way,” Leavitt said, quickly moving on before Feinberg could ask a planned second question.

Leavitt explained earlier that the president was “speaking facetiously” in the interview.

“The president was simply joking,” she said. “He was saying we’re doing such a great job, we’re doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling. But he was speaking facetiously.”