Karoline Leavitt melts down over double chin turkey photo
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was the latest person in the Trump administration to demand photographers remove a photo she deemed unflattering, according to reports on Tuesday.
Leavitt was apparently unhappy with an image of herself, a turkey and her son around Thanksgiving and disliked it so much that she reached out to the agency that captured it, The New Republic reported. Since then, the image has been removed from Agence France-Presse's collection and also scrubbed from Getty's archive.
"The photo, taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Andrew Caballero-Reynolds at a very low angle, is pointed up at Leavitt, who is smiling in a manner that gives her a double chin, while she is holding her son. A turkey they were looking down at, 'Waddle,' is also featured in frame very prominently," according to The New Republic.
This isn't the only time the White House has found a photo problematic. Leavitt's request comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also apparently had an issue with recent photos of himself.
The Pentagon apparently shut out photographers from attending press briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war in Iran after Hegseth's staff decided recent photos of him were "unflattering," The Washington Post reported. The images from the March 2 briefing came after Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed during a joint U.S.-Israeli military strike on Feb. 28. It was the first time Hegseth had appeared in the briefing room and spoken to press since June 26.
AFP has denied that there was a formal request to remove the image of Leavitt, who made it clear she did not like it.
“While we were made aware that White House staff found the photo unflattering, we want to be clear that there was no formal request to remove it, nor was there any external pressure involved,” AFP’s director of brand and communications Grégoire Lemarchand told The Daily Beast.
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