White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Wednesday that she will be leaving her job as President Donald Trump’s chief propagandist at the end of the month. For her taxpayer-funded salary of $195,200 per year, Leavitt has repeatedly lied, attacked, and defamed on Trump’s behalf.
While he has often publicly sparred with his own team and openly denigrated them, Trump has had nothing but praise for Leavitt—even making creepy “complimentary” comments about her looks—in exchange for her shameless distortions of the truth in service of his presidency.
Leavitt has demonstrated through her time in the press secretary job that pushing falsehoods and bad faith attacks are at the core of her being, and instead of fulfilling her job of informing the public of the president’s actions and policies, this is what she has done instead.
This was not a gradual evolution. Leavitt began her time as Trump’s press secretary in his second term lying right out of the gate.
In January of last year, she lied about foreign aid spending as part of the administration’s crusade to justify the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency boondoggle. Leavitt claimed $50 million in taxpayer dollars “went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.” This was an absolute lie. A cursory look at where U.S. spending on international aid for family planning went immediately disproved her statement—but this set in place a pattern of breezily lying that Leavitt would follow again and again.
When Trump was under enormous criticism—even from some Republicans—for covering up what the government had unearthed in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, Leavitt was there for him. In September she derided serious concerns about Epstein’s sex trafficking as a “hoax that is being perpetuated by opportunistic Democrats.” This was a carbon copy of Trump’s argument on the issue.
Leavitt was so thoroughly devoted to lying for Trump that she would even insist that millions of people didn’t see what they saw. In January, when Trump repeatedly confused Greenland and Iceland during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Leavitt said it didn’t happen. “No he didn’t,” she wrote on social media. But he did.
Leavitt was also there for Trump to cover for his blatant racism. In February, when he posted a video depicting former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes, Leavitt slammed the criticism as “fake outrage.” In this instance, the White House had to later acknowledge the outrage was legitimate and the video was pulled, though it was blamed on someone other than Trump.
Trump’s thinking and justifications for his rhetoric and policies are contorted and convoluted, and as an extension of his presidency, Leavitt had to tie herself up in knots as well. In April, she blamed Democrats for rising political violence, arguing that the party had engaged in “systemic demonization” of him. Even worse, like Trump, Leavitt argued that the need for heightened security meant Trump needed funds to build a White House ballroom.
Again echoing a frequent Trump falsehood, Leavitt referred to years of criticism of Trump for calling neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia “very fine people” as “the Charlottesville hoax.”
The Trump administration has now spent months trying to justify the war against Iran and Trump’s lies in pursuing that policy. Leavitt has been one of the more visible faces propping up the lies. As things began to seriously spiral out of control in April, she argued that U.S. bombing runs against the country were effective.
Leavitt also said that Trump did not need to seek congressional authorization for the war because “we’re currently in major combat operations”—an utterly nonsensical platitude.
She has used her position to argue that her brand of conservative Christianity is of superior moral caliber. Then in March, she pivoted from public prayer to bragging about how many Iranians had been killed in Trump-authorized bombing runs.
Showing that she could deftly lie about foreign and domestic policy, Leavitt tried to justify Trump’s deployment of federal troops to Washington, D.C., over a purported crime problem—but then admitted crime was down in the capital (the decline actually began under former President Joe Biden).
Leavitt tried to make her own job easier by inviting right-wing conspiracy theorists into the daily press briefing, giving them prime opportunity to lob her easy-to-answer, loaded questions.
And when she was asked direct questions about the rising body count of Trump’s actions—like the shooting death of Alex Pretti in Minnesota during ICE operations—she blamed the so-called “liberal-biased media” instead of directly answering.
Leavitt’s day-in, day-out lying and attacking will not be missed. Based on Trump’s track record her replacement is sure to be just as bad. Or somehow, improbably, worse.
Published with permission of Daily Kos
