White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened Tuesday’s briefing with an unusually sharp critique of what she called “negative and downright false” reporting on President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. “From the beginning of this entire process, much of the left-wing media has been actively rooting against the President of the United States and the pursuit of peace,” she said, accusing unnamed outlets of mischaracterizing last week’s Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Leavitt defended Trump’s decision to take a private phone call with Putin following the summit, rejecting a question about why European leaders present at the White House were excluded. “Only a reporter from the New York Times would ask a question like that,” she told the paper’s correspondent. The press secretary maintained that the call was part of a “highly productive” diplomatic sequence and did not constitute a snub of U.S. allies. In a separate exchange, Leavitt pressed Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich to acknowledge Trump’s long-standing assertion that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would never have begun had he been in office. “It’s true. Do you accept that?” Leavitt asked, prompting the reporter to reply, “Probably.” Leavitt cited the remark, and Putin’s own past statements, as evidence of the administration’s leverage in the talks. The briefing comes amid sustained criticism of the Alaska meeting, which produced no immediate cease-fire or sanctions agreement. Leavitt said negotiations are continuing and argued that critics in the media “sabotage the efforts towards peace” by portraying the summit as a failure. She did not provide a timeline for further talks but insisted the administration remains committed to ending the 18-month-old conflict.