A photo of White House Minister of Information Karoline Leavitt holding her son next to a pardonee at the annual White House Thanksgiving turkey amnesty event taken by AFP photographer Andrew Caballero-Reynolds back in November was removed from Getty Images’ database after the French wire service was “made aware” Karoline did not like the angle from which the pic was taken, the Daily Beast reports on the latest capitulation to Robespierrean vanity and censorship.
AFP brand and communications director Gregoire Lemarchand confirmed to Status.News that the image was pulled after initial publication and that the agency was “made aware” that the White House did not like the photo, but emphasized that the decision to remove the image was “an internal editorial one, based on our standard quality and selection criteria” even though, well, questioning the causality vs the correlation isn’t really a thing here given the sequence of complaint and removal.
Getty Images is an extortion racket, requiring the use of a rando tweet to show the pic:
Hey @PressSec @karolineleavitt….word on the street is that you don’t like this pic….what’s wrong with it? https://t.co/8egwkgxLkn pic.twitter.com/vblrIcoFHA
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) March 31, 2026
Yeah it’s not “flattering” but you know how the Streisand Effect works… Also worth noting is that Fox News used a pic Caballero-Reynolds had snapped either a few seconds before or after the one that was removed and it’s not significantly any more or less “flattering” to her:
PEPPERED WITH QUESTIONS: 'Waddle,' one of the turkeys set to be pardoned in an annual ceremony on Tuesday, faced the press in the White House briefing room.https://t.co/M1d6Pgzrn6
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 25, 2025
In conclusion this is stupid and AFP should’ve avoided fulfilling stereotypes about how the French historically have responded to threats from revanchist sociopaths with German surnames.