“I commit to telling the truth from this podium every single day,” Leavitt said.
White House Press Secretary Makes Steely and Unflinching DebutOnly Axios says, AKSHUALLY, she's a fucking liar.
The big picture: Asked by a reporter how many of the 3,500 immigrants arrested since Trump took office have criminal records, Leavitt said, "all of them because they illegally broke our nation's laws."
- "I know the last administration didn't see it that way, so it's a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that's exactly what they are."
- Leavitt declined to say if all the undocumented immigrants had criminal records.
Reality check: There is no law making it a crime to live in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant. Instead, the law treats it as a civil violation.
Back to the WaPo, which concludes with the decoder ring for their coverage:
Observers, including White House correspondents, were eager to see what approach Leavitt, 27, would take to engaging with the media. Leavitt, who served as an intern during Trump’s first administration, was a public-facing spokesperson for the Trump campaign last year, making her a logical choice to serve as press secretary as someone who was already familiar to the journalists who have covered the president.
The title is a joke, but every time you make criticisms of the NYT and WaPo, they respond with, "OUR JOB IS NOT TO BE THE RESISTANCE."
New White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did her first press briefing today and told a number of demonstrable lies (about condoms for Gaza, the criminal records of undocumented migrants, and more). This is how the New York Times covered it.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 4:24 AM
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