White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt demonstrated very clearly how the Trump administration approaches foreign policy when she failed to respond to a reporter's question about the presidential election in South Korea, openly struggling with a binder that turned out not to have any prepared response to one of the globe's biggest stories.
Lee Jae-myung was sworn in this week as South Korea’s new president, marking the end of a remarkably tumultuous period in the nation’s democratic history. Representing the liberal opposition Democratic Party, Lee succeeds conservative Yoon Suk Yeol, whose presidency unraveled after his brief and controversial declaration of martial law in December.
Lee's win was the culmination of widespread public discontent with the conservative government following the crisis, which many viewed as an overreach of executive power. He was given a full, single five-year term.
One would expect the White House to have a proper response to the matter, considering South Korea will now be in the hands of a new leader who will contend with foreign policy issues such as the Trump administration's international trade war, but Leavitt fumbled completely.
Asked if the White House "has a response to the election in South Korea," Leavitt flipped through her binder and said:
"Yes, we do. In fact, let me find it here for you. It should be somewhere in here."
But she came up empty, laughing openly:
"Um, we do not but I'll get back to you on that."
You can watch what happened in the video below.
Critics contend that Leavitt's unpreparedness says so much about the Trump administration's views of foreign policy, especially after the White House very quickly tore at the fabric of the international order and the U.S.' relationship with its allies around the world.
She was criticized almost immediately.
This is not the first time Leavitt has come under fire for accidentally telling the truth about the Trump administration.
In March, she defended the Justice Department amid backlash towards President Donald Trump's decision to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to facilitate the deportation of more than 250 undocumented immigrants purportedly from Venezuela with little to no due process.
Although a judge issued an order to block the deportations, the Trump administration allowed them to proceed anyway, prompting Leavitt to declare that the administration would "restore the Department of Justice to an institution that focuses on fighting law and order and crime and putting real criminals behind bars, not targeting Americans because of their religion or political speech."
However, critics noted that she said the White House would focus on “fighting law and order” instead of “fighting for law and order," a statement that many saw as reflective of the administration's open abuses of power.