Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media, Aug. 28, 2025
August 28, 2025 · The White House · 0:30:50
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt briefed the media at the White House on August 28, 2025, carried on the White House channel. She opened with the shooting the day before at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, where, as she presented the facts, a shooter opened fire during the first morning Mass of the school year, killing an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old and injuring 14 other children and three adults. “As Director Kash Patel confirmed yesterday, the FBI is currently investigating this shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics,” she said, noting the President’s proclamation directing flags to half-staff after his call with Governor Tim Walz.
Leavitt also previewed the President’s September 22 travel to New York to address the UN General Assembly on September 23, and a Labor Day message on five-year-low gas prices and the administration’s worker agenda. On Chicago, she recited statistics as the White House presented them — 13 consecutive years with the most murders of any U.S. city, a 2024 per-capita murder rate three times Los Angeles’s and nearly five times New York City’s, arrests in 16 percent of 147,899 reported crimes this year — and urged Governor Pritzker to “pick up the phone and call this president.” Asked about the CDC director’s firing, she said the director’s own lawyers had made clear she “was not aligned with the President’s mission to make America healthy again,” that Secretary Kennedy had asked for her resignation, and that “the President fired her, which he has every right to do”; a replacement, she said, would be announced soon.
Why it matters
This briefing is the White House’s first full on-record response to the Annunciation shooting — the terrorism and hate-crime investigation framing — and its fullest statistical case on Chicago crime in the briefing room, alongside the administration’s stated rationale for the CDC leadership change.
Scoreboard watch
This briefing is a scoreboard reference point: the FBI’s investigation of the Minneapolis shooting as domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics, the Chicago crime statistics, and the promised CDC replacement announcement, each as stated by the Press Secretary, to be checked against the investigation and the appointment record.
Sources: The White House, “Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media, Aug. 28, 2025” (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the Press Secretary at the briefing.