White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had a busy Thursday morning in the James Brady Briefing Room as she addressed multiple questions from the press on hot-button issues amid a Democrat-led government shutdown.
“Senate Democrats have voted 12 separate times now to keep the government closed,” she said, decrying the Senate’s refusal to pass a “clean” continuing resolution to reopen the government.
Leavitt said that “innocent Americans are suffering every day as a result” and noted that many federal employees will begin missing paychecks starting on Friday.
She also said that, as an example of disrupted federal operations, 13,000 air traffic controllers are continuing to work without pay and warned that this holiday season may be extremely dicey, fearing major delays and flight cancellations ahead.
“These are very avoidable consequences,” she said.
On November 1, 40 million low-income Americans will lose access to SNAP food benefits, as well, she said. “Democrats are solely responsible for all of this unnecessary pain,” she stated.
Leavitt also answered a broad range of questions from the press on multiple subjects, including the president’s White House Ballroom construction project, amid hysterical media accusations that he is demolishing or harming the White House in some way, or that the project is taxpayer-funded.
“The President has been incredibly transparent – I would reject any notion otherwise – when it comes to this ballroom project… When this plan was presented, and when these renderings—as soon as they were complete—the President directed me to come out here and to share them with all of you,” she told the press.
She reiterated, “The president is privately funding this ballroom addition to the White House grounds.”
Further, Leavitt addressed a Democrat plan to launch an “ICE tracker” site that will “track every single instance” of federal law enforcement movement regarding immigration operations.
“This is actively putting the lives of our ICE agents at risk,” she said. “…The men and women of ICE are outstanding people. I wish a Democrat on Capitol Hill would actually have the courage or the guts to stand up to their party and sit down with some of these men and women who are doing this incredibly difficult job of enforcing our federal immigration laws.”