A columnist excoriated President Donald Trump's press secretary after she announced her resignation on Wednesday.
Karoline Leavitt, who has been Trump's chief communicator since the beginning of his second term, announced she would step away at the end of the month to spend time with her family after having a baby in May. The news came as a surprise to some in the White House, considering that the midterms are less than three months away.
While Trump administration officials were quick to heap praise on Leavitt for her work, one columnist noted that she is leaving behind a sordid legacy of attacking the press.
"She didn’t just relay her master’s message attacking the press; she amplified it," David Gardner, chief national correspondent at The Daily Beast, wrote in a new article. "And when it was clear to everyone that Trump was lying, she stepped forward, not back, and compounded the lie."
Gardner also noted that Trump would be losing someone who was key to maintaining some of the fantasies he holds about his time in the White House.
"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," Gardner wrote.
"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," he added.