‘Left-Wing Hack’ Reporter Feuding With Karoline Leavitt Fires Back on CNN: ‘The President Lies!’

HuffPost reporter S.V. Date rejected the “left-wing hack” label that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt branded him with this week, saying he would be “failing” his audience to not point out President Donald Trump routinely “lies.”

Date discussed his public feud with Leavitt on CNN News Central with anchor Boris Sanchez on Tuesday afternoon. Date, when Sanchez asked for his response to Leavitt, said he was not interested in “stenography” while covering Trump.

“I routinely say that the president lies — he does. What can I do? That’s who he is,” Date said. “So I don’t apologize for that at all.”

Sanchez, a moment earlier, noted Date wrote a book in 2020 titled The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party With Racism and the Rest of Us With Coronavirus.

“The title, of course, is from an old Russian phrase about people who do things because they’re being used by others. And that’s honestly, it’s what it seemed in the first term that’s what was going on with President Trump,” explained Date.

His CNN appearance comes a day after Leavitt shared a screenshot of a text exchange in which she called Date an unserious “far left hack,” and asked him to stop sending her his “disingenuous, biased, and bullsh*t questions.” Her X post accompanying the screenshot also called Date, who is HuffPost’s White House correspondent, a “left-wing hack.”

Leavitt posted the screenshot a few days after Date published a story titled, “White House Gives Wild Response To A Simple Question Asked By HuffPost Reporter.”

Date, in the story, reported Leavitt responded “Your mom did” when he asked her, “Who suggested Budapest?” for an upcoming meeting between Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

His story questioned the selection of the Hungarian capital, since Putin had violated the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for Russia respecting its territory — a deal that was obviously violated by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The writer may not agree with Leavitt’s description, but he does make it pretty clear he views Trump as a threat to democracy.

Date’s X account includes a pinned post from 2023 that said: “As a journalist, it’s not my job to tell you who to vote for. As a journalist, it IS my job to warn you that if we vote Donald Trump back into office, it may be the last vote we ever cast.”

The post includes a link to purchase Useful Idiot on Amazon.

Watch above via CNN.