HuffPost Seized on Karoline Leavitt’s Viral ‘Your Mom’ Diss at Reporter — It Paid Off Big

(Photo by Andrew Leyden/NurPhoto via AP)

When White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to own a reporter with a “your mom” diss two weeks ago, his employer, HuffPost, spun the punchline into profit that boosted memberships by 66 percent — in just one day.

The exchange began on Oct. 17 when HuffPost correspondent Shirish Dáte asked who had recommended Budapest as the site for President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Your mom did,” Leavitt texted back. Minutes later, White House communications director Steven Cheung piled on: “Your mom.”

Shared by Dáte in an article, the insult ricocheted across social media, meriting a response from Leavitt “for context” – and then back into HuffPost’s favor.

The outlet promptly spun the exchange into a membership drive that boosted reader contributions, a company spokeswoman told The New York Times on Wednesday.

“MAGA Makes ‘Your Mom’ Jokes. We Make Headlines,” read the site’s bold pitch, following Leavitt’s online post of the exchange. “Serious questions deserve better than middle school humor.”

“I was kind of like, this is a serious war that’s going on that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians in their homes,” Dáte told Times’ media reporter Erik Wemple. “And then your response is, ‘Your mom’?”

Dáte, who has spent decades covering national politics, shrugged off the reply.

“I would guess that our core audience does not like Donald Trump for a variety of reasons,” he said. “And I hope my stories have informed them as to why they might oppose him.”

White House officials, however, have long been combative with Dáte, whose progressive outlet has remained outspokenly critical of the administration. In tweets after the Times profile went live on Wednesday, he shared some even more snippy exchanges with White House comms staffers.

When Dáte reached out for comment recently for an article about White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, he was told to “stop harassing him.”

After the Times brushed over the text as “expletive-laden,” Dáte was only too happy to share the full exchange in which he was called a “moron” and a “little f*cking b*tch.”

The words, he noted in a further tweet, would get staffers from previous administrations “fired” and could land equal trouble for anyone in the “corporate world.”

He followed: “In the Trump White House, of course, it likely gets you attaboys and high fives.”

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