When former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sat down with Sean Hannity, she recalled how President Donald Trump gave then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer an epic dressing down over his immigration policies at a lunch in Britain.
The story came up on Hannity’s podcast, Hang Out with Hannity, after he asked Leavitt, “How brutally honest will he be with them? How hard will he be on them?”
Her story did not disappoint.
“I think we were at maybe Windsor Castle, I don’t remember exactly where we were, maybe we were at where Keir Starmer lived, but we were in the UK,” she told Hannity. “We were in the UK and I sat in on a lunch with the president in Starmer.”
Leavitt then walked Hannity through the meal. “And we’re sitting around the table and we’re all enjoying lunch and we’re in this beautiful place,” she said. “And President just starts ripping into him for his policies, he’s like, ‘your policies here are so stupid, you need to close your borders.'”
Hannity, clearly delighted, asked, “He says it just like that?” Leavitt assured him Trump was only getting started.
“Oh yeah, ‘You need to deport these people you have in your country. You know, I know your country, I know your people. They hate what you’re doing and you need to,’” she recalled. According to Leavitt, Starmer just sat there and took it.
“And this is in his house, in his country. We’re not even at the White House, like, we’re not even on our own territory,” Leavitt added.
ICYMI: Trump Made Democrats Look Stupid Again
When Hannity pressed her on whether she found the whole thing entertaining, Leavitt didn’t hesitate. “Of course, you do,” she answered. “I remember Stephen Miller and I looking at each other like, Oh, boy.”
Karoline Leavitt on Keir Starmer:
We were in the UK, enjoying lunch with Keir Starmer, when Trump suddenly started ripping into him over his policies.
Trump said: “Your policies here are so stupid. You need to close your borders. You need to deport these people you have in your… pic.twitter.com/SLOHIbuNS4
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 26, 2026
Trump had every reason to press the point. British frustration with mass migration had been building for years, and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has been climbing to the top of the polls on that anger. In fact, the Financial Times noted at the time that “the US president’s call for Starmer to save his country from illegal migration by bringing in the military echoes calls by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK for a much tougher line on the issue, including ‘mass deportations.’”
To hear Leavitt tell it, none of this should surprise anyone. “What he says to the media publicly is exactly what he’s saying behind the scenes privately, too… because he’s just candid, and he’s honest,” she has said. She went further. “What he says with these foreign leaders behind the scenes is exactly what he tells the media five minutes later when he does a press conference. There’s no games.”
Leavitt also said Trump often uses colorful language with world leaders, though he speaks more plainly when a translator is involved. Starmer needed no translator, so he got the colorful version.
That candor is exactly what sets Trump apart. Trump told him the truth to his face, in his own country, over lunch. A year later, which of those two men is still running his country?
Spoiler alert: it’s the one who called the other’s policies stupid.
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