READ MY LIPS

Why Karoline Leavitt’s Real Legacy Is a Dangerous Empire of Lies

The departing White House press secretary served her master well. But not her country.

Opinion

I’ll admit to a sneaking admiration for Karoline Leavitt.

Few could have lasted as long as a twentysomething mouthpiece to an old, crotchety, sexist like Donald Trump. Don’t forget, Anthony Scaramucci was out after 10 days.

She looked the part, despite coming from Atkinson, New Hampshire, and not Palm Beach, Florida.

And she drank the Kool-Aid. The whole bottle. Defending Trump with all the wide-eyed devotion of a member of a religious cult.

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Loyalty is a virtue, and at the remarkably young age of 28, Leavitt is a confident communicator with a quick grasp of complicated political issues.

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But Trump was wrong to announce her departure with the extravagant claim that she has been “one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office.”

For my grudging admiration for her effectiveness is tempered by my belief that she has possibly been the worst press secretary in modern times.

Richard Nixon’s Press Secretary Ron Ziegler dismissed the Watergate burglary as a “third-rate burglary” and was forced to apologize to the press as the scandal unraveled. He, too, was the youngest to hold the role at the time, and he was used as a shield by a president who hated the press.

But his—and Nixon’s—time in the White House ended with a public more trusting in the Fourth Estate and less trusting in an administration brought down by deception and lies.

Karoline Leavitt’s legacy is the exact opposite. She didn’t just relay her master’s message attacking the press; she amplified it.

And when it was clear to everyone that Trump was lying, she stepped forward, not back, and compounded the lie.

Right-wing outlets run by influencers and would-be journalists with a handful of readers and viewers were given platforms to ask pre-set, pro-Trump questions while seasoned, experienced, and fair-minded reporters were dismissed and ridiculed.

“Only a reporter from The New York Times would ask a question like that,” she said at a briefing last year, parroting her boss’s repeated attacks on the outlet as fake news. “Shame on you,” she told another veteran reporter who dared question Trump’s integrity. Niall Stanage, a journalist from The Hill, was blasted as a “left-wing hack” after he quizzed her about an ICE raid.

Any questions at the briefings that were in any way critical were rejected with a spiky glare.

Leavitt consistently dodged questions about Trump’s health—spearheaded by the Daily Beast—or offered a realistic update on the bruising to his hands, his ankle swelling and cognitive lapses.

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Trump saw Leavitt as a reliable purveyor of his fabrications—saying the 2020 election was rigged, undocumented citizens were murderers and rapists, Iran’s nuclear material was obliterated, the war was won, defending ICE over deaths in Minnesota, and everything that was wrong with America was the fault of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. Communists. Socialists. Traitors.

Fact checks weren’t necessary in most cases. Common sense was enough. But she stuck to her script with a fiery defiance. To question Trump—or her—amounted to treason.

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This is a woman, after all, who claimed that Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize was “well past time.”

Understandably, Leavitt wants to spend more time with her 60-year-old husband, real estate developer Nicholas Riccio, and their young family. No one would say that she had an easy job at the White House since January 2025.

She has served Trump well.

But the same cannot be said for the American people.

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David GardnerChief National Correspondent

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