Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media, Apr. 8, 2025

April 8, 2025 · The White House · 0:32:03

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt briefed members of the media at the White House on Apr. 8, 2025, carried on the White House channel. At the top she announced that President Trump would welcome President Bukele of El Salvador for an official working visit on Apr. 14, where the two would discuss El Salvador’s partnership in holding Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members in its supermax prison. She said the President’s thoughts remained with families hit by the severe storms and flooding across the central United States, and that he had approved emergency declarations for Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee so FEMA could support state and local responders.

Leavitt also announced that the Supreme Court had allowed the administration to continue removing foreign terrorist invaders under the Alien Enemies Act, which she called a massive legal victory and a rebuke to lower-court judges who had tried to block the removals. The bulk of the briefing defended the “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs announced the week before: the era of American economic surrender was over, she said, foreign countries had gotten rich imposing tariffs and non-monetary barriers on American products, and the tariffs would generate revenue while onshoring jobs and cutting the deficits the United States runs with almost every country.

Why it matters

The briefing ties the administration’s two April storylines together on one podium: the tariff program as economic restoration, and the El Salvador prison partnership — formalized at the Bukele visit she announced — as the enforcement arm of the deportation program, now backed, as she presented it, by the Supreme Court’s Alien Enemies Act ruling.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the emergency declarations for Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee and the Apr. 14 Bukele visit are dated, checkable commitments announced from the podium, and the Alien Enemies Act ruling is a tracked legal milestone for the enforcement program.

Sources: The White House, “Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media, Apr. 8, 2025” (YouTube, Apr. 8, 2025) — official description and broadcast transcript as aired.