White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said “your mom” chose Budapest as a potential venue for a planned summit between US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in response to a question by Huffington Post reporter Shirish V. Date.
Following a call with Putin on Thursday, Trump said a possible in-person meeting could take place in Hungary in two weeks, once the countries’ top diplomats lay the groundwork.
HuffPost reported the “your mom” exchange on Friday, with Leavitt confirming it on Monday by sharing a screenshot of the conversation and doubling down on her choice of words.
In the Thursday conversation, Date could be seen asking Leavitt whether Trump is “aware of the significance of Budapest” being the venue of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Date then said, “Does [Trump] not see why Ukraine might object to that site” before asking, “Who suggested Budapest?”
Leavitt said, “Your mom did.”
HuffPost said White House Communications Director Steven Cheung then “added the far more succinct: ‘Your mom.’”
The Budapest Memorandum, signed by Ukraine, the UK, the US and Russia, was meant to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for giving up its inherited nuclear arsenal – an agreement Russia violated with its 2014 invasion.
Date then asked Leavitt, “Is this funny to you?” to which the press secretary mocked Date by calling him a “far left hack who nobody takes seriously.”
“Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and bullshit [sic] questions,” she added.
Leavitt confirmed the exchange by sharing a screenshot on Monday, where she elaborated on her criticism of Date.
“For context, S.V. Dáte of the Huffington Post is not a journalist interested in the facts. He is a left-wing hack who has consistently attacked President Trump for years and constantly bombards my phone with Democrat talking points,” Leavitt wrote in her X update.
“Here is my full response to his ‘inquiry,’” she added. “Activists who masquerade as real reporters do a disservice to the profession.”
Later, in a mocking response, Date wrote that his mom “tells [him] that she does NOT want the next Trump-Putin summit to be held in Budapest, but rather in a decent country that will slap the cuffs on that war criminal the second he steps off the plane.”
Who suggested Budapest – why it matters?
Apart from the city being the location of the Budapest Memorandum’s signing, recent geopolitical tensions surrounding the central European nation also mean the decision comes with implications.
For one, Hungary is an EU and NATO member state, though it has been at odds with the EU for close to a decade due to allegations of human rights violations.
As such, hosting the meeting in Hungary would require Putin to set foot in an EU and NATO member. If the suggestion came from Putin, it could be seen as a test of the waters following the Alaska summit, particularly given Budapest’s legal obligations to arrest Putin despite Budapest’s suggesting otherwise.
Not arresting Putin, again, would be another slap to the face of the post-WWII rule-based order.
After Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Budapest has also maintained ties with the Kremlin and continued to purchase Russian energy while opposing much of the bloc’s aid to Ukraine – in addition to rejecting Kyiv’s EU membership bid outright.
That, along with the latest diplomatic spat between Kyiv and Budapest – sparked partly by Ukraine’s destruction of the Druzhba pipeline supplying Hungary with Russian oil – follows espionage allegations after Kyiv said in May it had broken up a Hungarian spy ring and later accused Budapest of sending spy drones over Ukraine, an accusation Orban dismissed.
Since the planned Budapest summit was announced just a day before President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Trump, the proposal to hold a Putin-Trump meeting in a country seen as hostile to Ukraine carries diplomatic significance – and whether it originated from the US or Russian side may set the tone for what’s to come.