Speaking on The View, moderator Whoopi Goldberg gave White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt a blistering history lesson to explain how Leavitt wouldn't have her job if it wasn't for the "wokeness" she attacked from her podium during her first official press briefing.
During the press briefing, Leavitt was asked about the pause on certain federal grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and other initiatives. She stated that the pause meant "no more funding for transgenderism and wokeness across our federal bureaucracy and agencies, as well as no more funding for Green New Deal social engineering policies."
In response, Goldberg said Leavitt's "wokeness" remark "really pissed me off," adding:
"Let me explain something to you. Because without that wokeness, you might not have that job. Because women were not invited to that table. Women were not invited to many tables in this nation."
"The reason we fought and busted our behinds to make sure that you didn’t have to worry about this, and now to hear you talk about it and to hear anybody talk about the wokeness, the wokeness was put in place for a reason, because Black people couldn’t get into colleges, because women could not get into the colleges they wanted to go to."
"This is all women. See, this is not Black, Asian women. This is all women. Women were not invited to this party. It was a man’s world, and we busted our asses to make sure that this was a person's world."
Goldberg called on Leavitt to stop using the "wokeness" phrase, saying, "you don’t understand what you’re saying," before continuing:
"You’re saying about yourself that, you know, hey, that’s a terrible thing to be."
"It’s not a terrible thing to be. That’s why we fought, that’s what we were fighting for so that you could stand in that podium, so that Karine Jean-Pierre could stand at that podium so women of all colors and ilks, wherever they came from, whatever their belief system was, they had the opportunity to bust down that door."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
Many appreciated Goldberg's remarks and echoed her criticisms.
During the same briefing, Leavitt said the Trump administration was implementing major changes to accommodate less traditional voices in the briefing room.
Leavitt told reporters that these adjustments were intended to align with President Donald Trump's "revolutionary media approach," which he utilized during his campaign by engaging with popular podcast hosts and social media influencers.
Leavitt outlined steps the Trump administration was taking to achieve this, starting with the reinstatement of press passes for 440 journalists whose credentials she said "were wrongly revoked" by the Biden administration.
Goldberg criticized this move, saying she didn't want anyone to be able to just "spout stuff" at the briefings, saying that "quite honestly, I like when we're held to standards."
