When a Huffington Post reporter recently asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt who chose Budapest as the site for a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladamir Putin, she shot back: “Your mom did.”
A moment later, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung echoed Leavitt with his own answer to the serious question: “Your mom.”
That kind of childish snark is nothing new for Trump’s 27-year-old press secretary, who routinely makes numerous gaffes and spins lies in her press conferences.
She is the first line of defense for the man known as the “lyingest politician in the world.” Infamous for his own trail of lies, Trump has a press secretary following in his wake both as a liar and as a crude name-caller.
“Infamous for his own trail of lies, Trump has a press secretary following in his wake both as a liar and as a crude name-caller.”
Leavitt has two visible talents: Trolling and gaslighting.
What may get missed is that Trump’s lying is a sort of truth-telling in MAGA land. As a marketing/media genius, he has created an alternative to truth, facts and evidence. He has gathered a group of followers willing to defend his every statement as truth even when it is a lie so huge as to be otherwise unbelievable.
Leavitt is the “Trump Truth” enforcer. Just as Robert Jeffress has been Trump’s apostle, Leavitt is the secular version of Jeffress. She is more than a press secretary. She’s Super Troll, Gaslighter Supreme, Trump’s Secretary of Defense.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Photo by Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Images)
There’s no doubt Leavitt is a Trump worshipper. She says of her boss: “He’s the best. He is generous, a great listener and storyteller, and seriously one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. I am honored to work for him,” adding that the president is just like her father who “came from nothing and worked his way up.”
In addition to the intentional lies, Leavitt makes obvious gaffes. She referred to the cost of groceries as the “prices at the store and the grocery pump.”
She said: “We want to restore the Department of Justice to an institution that focuses on fighting law and order.”
Leavitt said the firefighter killed at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally would be in attendance at Trump’s 2025 address to Congress. “There will be everyday American heroes in attendance,” she declared. “You have Corey Comperatore, who lost his life protecting his family in Butler, Pa.”
Early on, Leavitt didn’t know who the administrator of DOGE was. “Elon Musk is overseeing DOGE. … There are career officials at DOGE, there are political appointees at DOGE. I’m not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium. I’m happy to follow up and provide that to you,” she said.
When the stock market was falling and the economy was sinking, Leavitt announced: “GREAT NEWS! The economy is starting to roar. … The president’s push to onshore jobs here in the United States is working. The Golden Age of America is on its way!”
“She’s also an expert, like Trump, at blaming Democrats for messes her own party has made.”
She’s also an expert, like Trump, at blaming Democrats for messes her own party has made.
Leavitt labeled District Judge James Boasberg, who threw a wrench into Trump’s mass deportation plans using the Alien Enemies Act, “a Democratic activist.”
“He has consistently shown his disdain for this president and his policies, and it’s unacceptable,” Leavitt added.
Leavitt attempted to make Signalgate a Democratic blunder. “If this story proves anything, it proves that Democrats and their propagandists in the mainstream media know how to fabricate, orchestrate and disseminate a misinformation campaign quite well.”
She reiterated that the excuse that the sharing of intelligence on the social media platform Signal wasn’t that bad because there were “no war plans discussed.” However, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, released some of the text messages that included detailed descriptions of planned drone strikes.
Another time she intoned: “The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 8.. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
When House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries clapped back at Leavitt, she doubled down: “The Democrat Party’s elected officials absolutely cater to pro-Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals. House Democrats voted against a resolution condemning Hamas following the horrific October 7 terrorist attacks, and Democrats cheered on pro-Hamas radicals while they hijacked America’s college campuses and harassed Jewish students.”
Then echoing Trump, she asserted: “Democrats opened our borders and allowed tens of millions of illegal aliens into our country over the past four years, including rapists and murderers, because they view them as future voters. Democrats coddle violent criminals and support soft-on-crime policies like cashless bail that let violent offenders back on the streets to hurt law-abiding citizens.”
The White House press secretary called Jeffries “an America Last, stone-cold loser.”
When challenged on facts, she derides the experts offering the truthful data and has called those who challenge her version “assholes.” She rejects out of hand any data she says has come from experts who are Democrats.
“When challenged on facts, she derides the experts offering the truthful data.”
She also echoes her boss in attacking the very media representatives sitting before her every day. She called the press “hounds” who are “obsessed.”
She lied when she said the Associated Press was wrong about DOGE having a Facebook page and that in DOGE’s cuts “no air traffic controllers nor any professionals who perform safety critical functions were terminated.” Both these statements were false.
Leavitt gets smart with reporters who challenge her authority. In March, she tussled with Josh Boak during a press briefing when he questioned whether she understood how tariffs work. She responded: “I think it’s insulting that you are trying to test my knowledge of economics and the decisions that this president has made. I now regret giving a question to the Associated Press.”
She called Huffington Post journalist S.V. Dáte a “left-wing hack,” following his article poking at her snarky response to the Budapest inquiry. “S.V. Dáte of the Huffington Post is not a journalist interested in the facts. He is a left-wing hack who has consistently attacked President Trump for years and constantly bombards my phone with Democrat talking points.”
She went on to share screenshots of messages between her and Dáte, saying, “Activists who masquerade as real reporters do a disservice to the profession.”
Dáte, the White House correspondent who previously mentioned Russia’s 1994 promise not to invade Ukraine as long as the country gave up its nuclear weapons, asked Leavitt if the topic was “funny” to her.
“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journalist,” Leavitt shot back.
Elsewhere, Leavitt has defended the firing of Carla Hayden, librarian of Congress, by claiming Hayden allowed “inappropriate books for children” in the library, which sparked significant debate and accusations of censorship from Democrats.
Leavitt also demanded that Trump be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
She has made statements regarding Pride month and Juneteenth that have been characterized as “gaslighting” and “racist dog-whistling,” with her behavior described as intentionally designed to “troll” liberals.
“As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios,” Leavitt wrote in response to an email from a journalist working for The New York Times. Further, she elaborated to the Washington Post, “Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story.”
Trump Truth works in carefully choreographed layers and waves of enablers. Leavitt is the perfect “gaffer” for America’s greatest liar. She eagerly and gleefully reinforces the lies to an audience who knows they are all lying and lap it up anyway.
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