White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday dismissed reports claiming that the U.S. was setting up a military base near the Gaza border, calling them “false and irresponsible.” Speaking at an explosive press briefing, Leavitt emphasized that President Trump has no plans to deploy American troops in the region, reiterating that the administration “does not want to see boots on the ground” amid escalating Middle East tensions.
00:00So I had a conversation directly with the reporter who wrote this article, and this article was based on a single piece of paper, an inquiry that somebody in the Department of Navy made about an idea that may happen in the future.
00:15And this reporter deemed that as an official plan and ran with a story that the United States is looking into it.
00:21I checked with the highest levels of the United States federal government.
00:24So I had a conversation directly with the reporter who wrote this article, and this article was based on a single piece of paper, an inquiry that somebody in the Department of Navy made about an idea that may happen in the future.
00:48And this reporter deemed that as an official plan and ran with a story that the United States is looking into it.
00:54I checked with the highest levels of the United States federal government.
00:58This is not something the United States is interested in being engaged in.
01:01It's not something we are currently involved in right now that we will be funding.
01:05And the president has been very clear he doesn't want to see boots on the ground with respect to what's happening in the Middle East.
01:10We've made great peace.
01:11We've made great progress with the peace plan in Gaza, and we want to continue to see that move forward.
01:15But I put a comment in that story for a reason.
01:18And sometimes we see reporters take a piece of paper like this and just deem it as official policy, and sometimes that misleads people a little bit.
01:27There's been reports in Israeli media that the U.S. is considering building a temporary military base on the Gaza border.
01:34Can you confirm these reports?
01:35So I had a conversation directly with the reporter who wrote this article, and this article was based on a single piece of paper, an inquiry that somebody in the Department of Navy made about an idea that may happen in the future.
01:51And this reporter deemed that as an official plan and ran with a story that the United States is looking into it.
01:57I checked with the highest levels of the United States federal government.
02:00This is not something the United States is interested in being engaged in.
02:04It's not something we are currently involved in right now that we will be funding.
02:07And the president has been very clear he doesn't want to see boots on the ground with respect to what's happening in the Middle East.
02:13We've made great peace.
02:14We've made great progress with the peace plan in Gaza, and we want to continue to see that move forward.
02:18But I put a comment in that story for a reason, and sometimes we see reporters take a piece of paper like this and just deem it as official policy, and sometimes that misleads people a little bit.
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