The White House press briefing on Tuesday took an unexpected turn when press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s response may have inadvertently revealed a bold falsehood by President Donald Trump.
During the briefing, Leavitt faced questioning regarding Trump’s request to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to rename New York’s Penn Station to Trump Station.
Last Friday, while aboard Air Force One en route to Florida, Trump claimed to reporters that the suggestion to rebrand the train station originated from Schumer.
However, Schumer, a prominent New York Democrat, quickly refuted this claim.
“Absolute lie. He knows it. Everyone knows it,” Schumer declared in a post on X.
Four days later, Leavitt did not attempt to dispute the premise of the question, implicitly acknowledging that the initiative to rename the station was indeed the president’s own idea.
‘To your first question about the renaming, why not?’ she responded.
‘It was something the President floated in his conversation with – with Chuck Schumer,’ she added – cementing Schumer’s version of the story.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday may have inadvertently got President Donald Trump caught in a lie when she didn’t push back on an assertion that it was Trump’s idea to rename Penn Station after himself
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (left) said publicly that it wasn’t his idea to have Penn Station named after President Donald Trump (right), which the president has been using as a bargaining chip after his administration paused funds for the Gateway Tunnel project
The New York Times reported earlier on Friday that top administration officials had told Schumer that he could get Trump to unfreeze the federal dollars meant to fund the Gateway Tunnel project if he agreed to help the president get the Trump name attached to Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport.
The Gateway Tunnel has been a long-needed infrastructure project to build a new rail tunnel to connect New York City and New Jersey.
It would replace – for a time – the current North River Tunnel, which was put into service in 1910, so it could be rehabilitated for modern rail travel.
The $16 billion project was halted on Friday – and won’t resume until federal funds are released.
The Trump administration said the funds were paused over DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – initiatives.
Trump and Schumer met at the White House in January to discuss the frozen funds.
Sources told the Times that Schumer refused Trump’s request to help him with the name change.
If Schumer did acquiesce, even as the top Senate Democrat, he doesn’t have direct oversight over either locale.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed back on President Donald Trump’s assertion that it was the New York Democrat’s suggestion to rename Penn Station after Trump in a Friday night post on X
‘Only one man can restart the project and he can restart it with the snap of his fingers,’ Schumer said in his Friday X post.
To a question about whether it was appropriate for Trump to hold up the funds to get Penn Station named after him, Leavitt responded, ‘as for the funding, the President has addressed that separately himself.’
New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said Tuesday at a press conference that the funds had been stopped ‘because Donald Trump is throwing a temper tantrum,’ amNewYork reported.
Trump has gone to great lengths to cement his legacy as a two-term president, even with nearly three years left in his term.
He’s putting his mark on the White House by constructing a ballroom, which has been made more controversial by ordering the East Wing demolished before it went through an oversight process.
Trump had his name added to the Kennedy Center in mid-December – and then announced that the performing arts venue in Washington, DC would close for two years after July 4th festivities for renovations that would have a Trumpian flair.
He already showed off designs for marble to be added to the Kennedy Center’s seats.
Trump has also green-lit Trump $1 coins to be minted to mark the country’s 250th birthday, with detractors saying that it’s un-American for a living president to be depicted on U.S. currency.
