5 Most Shocking White House Briefing Room Moments of 2025

The tone was set from her very first briefing on Jan. 28 — eight days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

“According to recent polling from Gallup, Americans’ trust in mass media has fallen to a record low,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, just minutes after taking the podium.

The seed was immediately planted. It seemed clear, from that moment, that the relationship between Leavitt and the White House press corps would be purely adversarial. And sure enough, that’s exactly how it played out. Leavitt frequently scolded the press as part of her opening soliloquies — and then the correspondents often hit back with pointed questions.

But in terms of shock value, there were several clashes, scoldings, or other incidents that rose above the rest. Here are the 5 most shocking moments in the White House briefing room in 2025.

5. Rock the Boak

Historically, correspondents from the Associated Press have avoided heated confrontations with White House press secretaries. While they regularly ask difficult questions, their queries usually don’t usually produce the kind of fireworks as those of their briefing room colleagues representing TV networks.

But during one briefing in March, the AP’s Josh Boak couldn’t mask his astonishment at a comment from Leavitt about tariffs. Boak asked Leavitt why the president was prioritizing “tax hikes in the form of tariffs” as opposed to the tax cuts he promised on the campaign trail. Leavitt, in response, claimed “he’s not doing that.”

“He’s actually not implementing tax hikes,” Leavitt said. “Tariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries that, again, have been ripping us off. Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people, and the president is a staunch advocate of tax cuts. As you know, he campaigned on no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on Social Security benefits. He is committed to all three of those things, and he expects Congress to pass them later this year.”

Boak was completely flabbergasted by what he’d just heard.

“I’m sorry, have you ever paid a tariff?!” he shot back. “Because I have. They don’t get charged on foreign companies. They get charged on the importers.”

Leavitt was not pleased.

“And, ultimately, when we have fair and balanced trade — which the American people have not seen in decades — as I said at the beginning,” Leavitt responded, “revenues will stay here, wages will go up, and our country will be made wealthy again; and I think it’s insulting that you’re trying to test my knowledge of economics and the decisions that this president has made. I now regret giving a question to The Associated Press.”

4. Diss Is CNN

The press secretary hit the roof, in late June, over a report from CNN’s national security correspondent on a leaked intelligence assessment which found that the U.S. strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities may not have been as impactful as the administration was claiming.

Leavitt, in response, took on Bertrand’s entire career — trashing her over not just the report on the Iran strikes, but other years-old reports the administration took umbrage with on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the origins of Covid.

“This is a reporter who has been unfortunately used by people who dislike Donald Trump in this government to push fake and false narratives. She should be ashamed of herself!” Leavitt said. She added, “That’s not what reporting is. Journalism is trying to find the facts and the truth. And this week we saw this same reporter being used to push a fake narrative to try to undermine the President of the United States and, more importantly, the brave fighter pilots who conducted one of the most successful operations in United States history.”

3. Can’t Hardly Kait

Of course, this list would be incomplete without a mention of CNN’s primary representative in the briefing room — Kaitlan Collins. The two battled numerous times in 2025, but one exchange in December stood out.

“If the economy is as strong as the president has said it is, why is he telling parents two weeks before Christmas that they should only buy two or three dolls for their children?” Collins began.

Leavitt responded by taking a swipe at Collins.

“With respect to affordability, every metric, Kaitlan — and I wish you would report more on it — that the economy is getting better and brighter than what it was under the previous administration,” Leavitt said.

Collins replied, “Grocery prices have been up. So, we’ve covered the economy, but there’s mixed signals in terms of what that looks like.

The press secretary went on to accuse Collins and her briefing room colleagues of ignoring similar economic conditions during President Joe Biden’s administration.

“My predecessor was standing at this podium, but now you want to ask me a lot more questions about it, which I’m happy to answer,” Leavitt said. “But I will just add, there’s a lot more scrutiny on this issue from this press corps than there was [then] … My predecessor stood up at this podium, and she said inflation doesn’t exist. She said the border was secure! And people like you just took her at her word, and those were utter lies. Everything I’m telling you is the truth, backed by factual data, and you don’t want to report it because you want to push untrue narratives about the president.”

Collins tried to ask a question on a different topic, but Leavitt shot her down.

“I’m not going to take your follow-up,” Leavitt said.

Moments later, the press secretary went after CNN as a whole.

“Their viewership has gone down, the ratings have declined, and I think the president rightfully believes that network would benefit from new ownership,” she said.

2. Kam You Believe This?

It’s impossible to tell the story of White House briefing room in 2025 without talking about the influence of “new media” — a category which, in the White House’s estimation, included Mollie Hemingway (a Fox News contributor for nearly a decade), Katie Pavlich (who was a Fox News contributor for more than a decade) and even Sean Spicer (a former White House press secretary). The primary qualification for the new media designation in the Trump White House seemed to be a willingness to ask a fawning question. And on that score, one personality towered above the rest.

During an April briefing held exclusively for new media figures, conservative influencer Kambree Nelson asked the White House’s top spokesperson directly for instructions on how to do her job.

“I’m kind of the nerd when it comes to reporting,” Nelson said. “I’m not the headline news girl. I’m the nuts-and-bolts, I’m the policy-type nerd; so what direction do you advise me to go into? Like the White House files that y’all send out every single day? Because that’s what people are used to. When they wanna ask me questions, they wanna know the nuts and bolts of everything.”

Leavitt beamed at the flat-out subservient question.

“I wish there were people in the legacy media that were like you,” Leavitt said. “And didn’t focus on the sensationalist headlines but actually cared about the facts.”

1. A Swine Mess

It’s Leavitt’s job to always defend the president’s words and actions — no matter the circumstances. And obviously, there have been times when Trump has not made that job easy. But Leavitt’s most shocking defense of her boss came on Nov. 20 — days after the president told a female reporter, “Quiet, piggy!”

Leavitt’s spin — when confronted about Trump’s remark — was utterly jaw-dropping:

“Look, the president is very frank and honest with everyone in this room,” Leavitt said. “You’ve all seen it yourself. You’ve experienced it yourselves. And I think it’s one of the many reasons that the American people reelected this president because of his frankness. And he calls out fake news when he sees it. He gets frustrated with reporters when you lie about him, when you spread fake news about him and his administration, but he also is the most transparent president in history. And he gives all of you in this room, as you all know, unprecedented access. You are in the Oval Office almost every day asking the president questions.”

She added, “I think the president being frank, and open, and honest to your faces rather than hiding behind your backs is frankly a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration — where you had a president who lied to your face and then didn’t speak to you for weeks and hid upstairs and didn’t take your question. So I think everyone in this room should appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis.”

Watch above.

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