Karoline Leavitt Can’t Explain Why Trump Is So Optimistic About Putin

On Monday, President Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic saying that he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to make a deal “for him,” to end the war on Ukraine. 

When a reporter asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday what led Trump to that conclusion, she offered a meandering nonanswer. 

‘Well, the president has learned a lot, which is part of the reason he opened up this dialogue,” Leavitt responded. “The previous administration who oversaw the beginning of this war refused to talk, and President Trump has always said ‘in order to learn, in order to move the ball forward with diplomacy and towards peace, you have to have open dialogue. And so that’s why the president has had several conversations by phone, and of course an in-person meeting last Friday with President Putin … he’s understanding what both sides want, what both sides are going to have to give up. And he has always said, ‘in order to get a good deal, both sides are going to have to walk away a little bit unhappy.” 

In short, Leavitt once again entirely avoided answering a very direct question. 

Putin has not significantly changed his behavior or goals recently, as far as we can tell. And he has consistently shirked the idea of a ceasefire, while continuing to batter Ukraine and encroach upon more of its territory. Any “deal” that happens under these circumstances would only leave one side “unhappy.”   

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was forced Tuesday to walk back Donald Trump’s claim that he had gotten Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Delivering a readout at a White House press briefing, Leavitt claimed that Putin had “agreed to begin the next phase of the peace process, a meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskiy” during a phone call with Trump the day before. Trump had made similar claims himself on Monday.

But when one reporter pointed out that Moscow hadn’t voiced any such commitment, Leavitt was left to explain that the Trump administration was still working to secure the second summit.

“The Kremlin seemed to indicate that Putin did not firmly agree to a bilateral. Did he agree to have a sit-down with just Zelenskiy on the phone yesterday?” asked a reporter.

“I can assure you that the U.S. government and the Trump administration is working with both Russia and Ukraine to make that bilateral happen as we speak,” Leavitt replied, before quickly moving on.

The Kremlin was quick to dump cold water on Trump’s meager wins from his meeting with European leaders this week. Following Putin and Trump’s purportedly productive conversation, Moscow released a statement claiming that the leaders had merely discussed “the idea of raising the level of Russian and Ukrainian representation in the negotiations,” and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also refused to commit to a meeting.

Trump said Monday that he “sort of” set up a meeting between the two leaders but added that ultimately, “they’re the ones that have to call the shots.” Still, the president hopes that a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy would be followed by a trilateral meeting, this time including himself.

New court records indicate that the high-profile arrest of Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in May was a top-down directive from the Trump administration.

President Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly
ordered the arrest personally.

Baraka was arrested on May 9, as he and other New Jersey lawmakers, including Representative LaMonica McIver, attempted to conduct oversight at an ICE facility. Baraka and company received mixed messages from the agents there: The mayor was reportedly invited onto the property, left when he was requested to do so, but was nonetheless arrested, in a chaotic event, for trespassing.

McIver is fighting assault charges related to the incident, which she claims are politically motivated. The Newark mayor’s case, on the other hand, was dismissed in May.

But a question remained: Had the order for Baraka’s arrest come down from on high? The answer—apparently, yes—came in a filing by McIver’s defense team, citing “video evidence” produced by the government in discovery, which was first reported by Politico Tuesday.

At 2:37 p.m. on the day of the incident, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent at the facility reportedly took a phone call, “then immediately announced that Mayor Baraka, and anyone who was not a Member of Congress, must leave or be arrested.” The agent told the mayor to leave, and he complied.

The lawmakers eventually came to believe they would, in fact, be permitted to conduct oversight. But minutes later, the HSI agent had another phone call, in which he told his interlocutor: “I am arresting the mayor.… Even though he stepped out, I am going to put him in cuffs.”

Turning to his fellow federal officers, the agent declared, “We are arresting the mayor right now, per the deputy attorney general of the United States. Anyone that gets in our way, I need you guys to give me a perimeter so I can cuff him.”

This revelation about Baraka’s arrest—which the federal judge who dismissed the case described as a “worrying misstep”—comes amid heightened concerns about the president weaponizing federal agents, including from ICE, against his political opponents.

The Department of Homeland Security blamed local officials in Maine for using the department’s federal database to determine the employment eligibility of a police officer who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, according to NBC News.  

ICE arrested Old Orchard Beach Police Department reserve Officer Jon Luke Evans late last month, shocking local law enforcement officials who had been told by the federal government that their colleague was permitted to work in the United States. ICE told the Associated Press Monday that Evans, who is originally from Jamaica, would be given the opportunity to voluntarily leave the country immediately. 

Evans has agreed to leave the United States.

As Donald Trump ramps up his purported crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital (and elsewhere), the removal of a law enforcement officer strikes a particularly ironic note—but Evans’s removal hits on yet another crucial issue. 

Old Orchard Beach had previously confirmed Evans’s immigration status by using E-Verify, DHS’s online system for employers to quickly certify whether a potential employee can legally work legally in the U.S. based on records at the Social Security Administration and DHS. 

But apparently that’s not good enough for the Trump administration. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin accused Old Orchard Beach of “reckless reliance” on her own department’s program, according to NBC News. Critics of the program had said that it’s easy to fool the E-Verify system with fake I-9 documents and stolen IDs. 

But employers have few alternatives to E-Verify. Nine states have even implemented laws requiring private-sector employers to use the fast and free program. Some opponents to the program have said that stricter enforcement could lead to discrimination and worker shortages. 

In the wake of Trump’s sweeping deportation scheme, employers who use E-Verify have not been spared from immigration raids. In June, a food-packaging company in Omaha saw more than half of its workforce arrested, though the employer said he’d used E-Verify to check the work status of all of his employees. 

DHS recently added a new tool to notify employers when someone’s employment authorization is revoked and must be reverified. If employees cannot provide new evidence of valid employment authorization, they will be terminated immediately. 

The Trump administration has been snatching delivery drivers off the street mid-order as part of its sweeping federal effort to make Washington, D.C. “safer,” as multiple residents have reported.

“Yesterday, my UberEats driver got arrested by ICE while he was delivering my food. I walked downstairs to pick it up and I noticed his location hadn’t changed in two or three minutes, and it was like two or three blocks away from my house,” said D.C. resident Tyler DeSue in a TikTok he posted on Sunday that went viral. “I stepped into the streets and I saw police lights … he was being questioned by eight or nine ICE officers.”

The officers claimed that they had pulled over the delivery driver—whose name is “Sidi” on the app—because his moped plates didn’t show up in their index, before conceding that there wasn’t a single issue with the vehicle. The driver’s first language was Arabic, and when they asked how he arrived in the United States, he struggled, and the ICE officers arrested him.

“He doesn’t understand what you’re saying bro, just use Google Translate on your phone, it takes two seconds,” DeSue can be heard saying on video as two officers confront the clearly distressed driver. Then they cuff and arrest him.

This is just one of many recent anecdotes, as residents who were told that the city would be cracking down on “violent crime” report they have observed several people being detained with no probable cause.

D.C. residents are reporting that they’re seeing fewer delivery drivers out and about, and Trump’s crackdown is also having a larger impact. The popular Irving Street corridor in D.C.’s Columbia Heights neighborhood, usually bustling with vendors and drivers, is now quiet. And restaurants across the city saw a 25 percent drop in reservations in the days immediately after Trump federalized the city’s police forces and deployed the FBI, DEA, HSI, ATF, and the National Guard—even as the president claimed business was booming.

“People who haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington D.C. in two years are going out to dinner,” he said on Monday. That was an outright lie.

This federal takeover was supposed to make residents feel safe. However, for many, it’s had the reverse effect.

“What I am seeing, personally, is widespread fear amongst community members,” Atenas Estrada, deputy program director for the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights told NBC Washington. “People [are], you know, making decisions or avoiding places that they perhaps would not otherwise avoid or leave.”

Washington residents are irate over the capital city’s federal occupation.

Federal officers conducting an arrest outside a Trader Joe’s in the city’s Union Market neighborhood Monday evening were met with jeers and chants from a crowd. Protesters were furious at the federalized police presence.

“You’re not even from here. Piss off, every last one of you,” yelled one woman.

“Get the fuck off the streets, you’re not here for us,” shouted another.

“Fascists, go home!” a man cried out.

Donald Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department last week to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023, before violent crime plummeted across the country. In 2024, crime in the nation’s capital was down 35 percent, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

Trump has since turned to his red-state allies to bolster the occupation. So far, six Republican-led states—Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Ohio—have sent hundreds more National Guard members to Washington. Their contributions will result in at least 1,100 more militarized officers descending on the city’s streets.

But the directive does have an expiration date: Trump has less than 30 days before his occupation of the Metropolitan Police requires congressional approval by way of a new law.

His time constraints on leveraging the D.C. National Guard are a bit more complicated. Trump’s repeated use of the National Guard brushes up against the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The trial challenging the legality of his decision to deploy the National Guard in June against Los Angeles protesters kicked off last week in a California courtroom.

John Deere has been hit hard by President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The farm equipment manufacturer and industry bellwether just announced mass layoffs affecting more than 200 workers at three Midwestern plants.

The company is set to fire 115 employees at a facility in East Moline, Illinois, later this month, according to the Des Moines Register. Next month, 52 workers at a facility in Moline, Illinois, and 71 employees at a facility in Waterloo, Iowa, will also reportedly be terminated.

“As stated on our most recent earnings call, the struggling ag economy continues to impact orders for John Deere equipment,” said the company in a statement, per Illinois Public Media. “This is a challenging time for many farmers, growers and producers, and directly impacts our business in the near term.”

In that same earnings call, John Deere attributed a slowdown in Q3 sales to customer cautiousness amid Trump’s freewheeling tariff policy.

“If you have customers that are concerned about what their end markets are going to look like in a tariff environment, they’re waiting to see the outcomes of what these trade deals look like,” said John Deere executive Cory Reed.

“The primary drivers for the change from last quarter are increased tariff rates on Europe, India, and steel and aluminum,” said Josh Beal, the company’s director of investor relations.

Estimating that tariffs have already cost the company $300 million this year, Beal forecast a full-year tariff impact of nearly $600 million.

The news comes as evidence increasingly accumulates that ordinary Americans are shouldering the costs of the administration’s trade policy.

Texas is treating Democratic representatives like convicted felons for trying to stop the GOP’s illegal gerrymandering efforts.

Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows is forcing every Democrat to stay with a state trooper at all times if they want to exit the House chamber, in response to their leaving Texas to protest Governor Greg Abbott’s redistricting efforts. The state legislature is set to return on Wednesday, but it’s unclear just how long Democrats will be followed home by law enforcement.

“The speaker announced, once quorum was restored, that the call of the House would remain, and any member that was out because of the quorum break would be required to sign a permission slip agreeing to be under the authority of [the Texas Department of Public Safety] in order to leave the Capitol. I refused,” Democratic Representative Nicole Collier told NPR’s Texas branch. “I refused to sign the permission slip to be able to leave the Capitol. I disagree with that authoritarian tactic that they have taken.”

Over 50 state Democrats left Texas two weeks ago in response to the Republican Party’s attempt to reshape voting districts to favor Republicans to gain more House seats in the 2026 midterms elections.

This is a blatantly unethical power grab, and the Texas GOP knows it, which is why it’s trying to hold Democrats hostage unless they have a police officer by their side. If this was happening in any other country, words like “authoritarian” or “draconian” would likely be used. Yet Texas Democrats are being forced to capitulate, scared to even leave the House floor to sleep in their homes.

Collier, meanwhile, has at least temporarily accepted her fate.

“I will have to stay here; I hadn’t really given [it] much thought. What matters to me is making sure I resist, and fight back, and push back. I’m sure I’ll fall asleep eventually, whether that’s in my chair or on the floor,” Collier continued, referring to her forced detainment in the House chamber.

Texas Democrats have already been threatened with arrest and expulsion. This State Trooper watch is yet another aggressive escalation by a state government that has cast basic democracy aside.

“This was my night, bonnet and all, in the #txlege,” Collier posted this morning, accompanied by a picture of her asleep in her House Chamber chair.

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo needs a little push to regain his Cuo-mentum—and he’s hoping Donald Trump will give it to him, Politico’s New York Playbook reported Tuesday.

Speaking at a fundraiser in the Hamptons Saturday, the former New York governor said that he anticipates Trump and other top Republicans will direct support his way in an effort to stop New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who trounced Cuomo’s Democratic primary efforts by double digits.

“We can minimize (the Sliwa) vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate,” Cuomo said, referring to Curtis Sliwa, the 71-year-old, ever-bereted GOP candidate. “And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is to stop Mamdani. And you’ll be wasting your vote on Sliwa. So I feel good about that.”

When asked by an attendee whether he or his team was in conversation with the White House, Cuomo was vague but not dismissive when he said, “Let’s put it this way: I knew the president very well.”

“I believe there’s a big piece of him that actually wants redemption in New York. He feels that he was rejected by New York. We voted for Hillary Clinton. Bill de Blasio took his name off things. So I believe there will be opportunities to actually cooperate with him,” Cuomo continued.

“I also believe that he’s not going to want to fight with me in New York if he can avoid it.”

But it was Cuomo who said that he was not “personally” looking to do battle with Trump and compared their relationship to a “dysfunctional marriage,” according to The New York Times.

Earlier this month, the Times reported that Cuomo had spoken with Trump about New York City’s mayoral race. Mamdani excoriated the reported call as a “betrayal” of the entire city. Cuomo denied that the conversation had taken place.

Cuomo also claimed that he would decline the president’s endorsement. But while rubbing elbows with the Hamptons’ wealthy donors, Cuomo seemed markedly less opposed to working with Trump—and even open to being part of his “redemption,” whatever that would mean.

Mamdani slammed Cuomo for courting Trump’s support. “At (another) Hampton’s fundraiser with Republican donors on Saturday, Andrew Cuomo said it plainly: he’s expecting Trump’s help to defeat us in November. ‘I feel good about that,’ Cuomo said. New Yorkers won’t,” Mamdani wrote Tuesday on X.

On Fox and Friends Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump somewhat clarified his murky plans for the Russia-Ukraine war, giving his word—notoriously fickle as it is— that there will be no U.S. troops on the ground.

Earlier in the week, the president met with EU leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Trump had also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska a few days before.

Trump on Monday couldn’t be pinned down on whether U.S. troops would be sent to aid Ukraine, merely stating that European countries would provide the “first line of defense” and “take a lot of the burden,” whereas the U.S. will “be involved” and provide “a lot of help.”

In his Tuesday morning Fox News appearance, he promised that there will be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine.

“Well, you have my assurance, you know, I’m president,” Trump said.

However, he added that European nations such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are willing to put “boots on the ground”—and claimed that they would not be acting as “a part of” NATO. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, to be honest with you,” the president said.

Trump also mentioned the possibility of providing U.S. air support to such European ground troops, saying, “We’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you could talk about, by air.” He repeated that he doesn’t think this would “be a problem.”

It seems that, for now, Trump remains committed only to putting American boots on the ground in Democratic-run cities.