Karoline Leavitt is leaving the White House podium at the end of this month, and the stated reason is that she wants more time with her young children. I actually believe that part, and that’s probably the only truthful thing she’s said during her disastrous tenure.
I don't doubt for a second that being a mother to two small kids while working that job is brutal. But I don’t take anything she says at face value, and I know that’s a terrible thing to say. But Leavitt has said so many terrible things that the fact I don’t give her the benefit of the doubt is something she earned, over and over and over again.
Even her “goodbye” social post was a lie.
Here's what I don't believe: that she's leaving because she couldn't hack it. Hack is used purposely because she is a hack in my eyes. And she hacked the truth habitually.
She could probably sustain this job indefinitely if she wanted to, because she’s young, and she’s done a good job of taking a lie and adding more lies on top of the original lie.
If there is an award for the most dishonest presidential press secretary in history, Leavitt is a winner by a landslide, just like the lie that her boss tells about his election victory.
The press secretary job is miserable, and she sure made it more miserable. It’s one of the most thankless assignments even when you're working for a decent, honest president. You're the buffer between an administration and a skeptical press corps. And even in the best-case scenario, you're going to get slammed with criticism you didn't personally earn.
But Leavitt was built for exactly the version of this job Trump needed. She wasn't worn down by it. She was good at it, by this administration's standards, and she'll be fine, because the new GOP is full of liars. So the outside GOP world will embrace Leavitt.
I know this job because I did it. I was a press secretary on Capitol Hill for nearly seven years, and it was not an easy seven years. My congressman was reprimanded by the U.S. House — the first time that had happened to anyone in a decade. He fathered a child out of wedlock in the middle of one of our reelection campaigns. We won anyway, but it was ugly. And he had a federal grand jury investigation, which he was cleared of.
I had my hands full, but I tried my best to be truthful.
And that's the one thing everybody tells you about going into the job of a press secretary: Tell the truth, or as close to the truth as you can. Your credibility is the only asset you actually have in that job. Lose it, and you have nothing left to sell.
Leavitt had zero credibility because she was selling snake oil from a venomous creature, and no one — well, except Fox and Newsmax — was taking her at her word. I don’t think I ever recall someone from the “lamestream” media ever thanking Leavitt for her honesty, or for clearing something up.
Look, I won't pretend I was a saint. There were moments, under pressure, when I danced around the truth instead of stating it flatly. I learned on the job. But I always understood that the dancing-around bit had a limit, and that crossing it permanently would cost me moving forward.
Karoline Leavitt never seemed to learn that lesson, or never cared to. Actually, scratch that. She knew from the get-go that she had to be a liar just like her boss, so the word “truth” was never in the equation. In an administration where the only person who lies more than Donald Trump is arguably nobody, because Trump has no rival, Leavitt built her entire tenure as a solid runner-up.
Watching her briefings was 99% of the time grotesque. And maddening. And anger-inducing. I cop to watching plenty of them. She would take one of Trump’s wild fabrications, turn it over in her hands, twist it, and twist it, and twist it, and try to hand it back to the press corps as something sellable.
It never was. And just as bad was her arrogance. She was obnoxious and rude, even on her good days.
What set her apart from the merely evasive press secretaries who came before her wasn't the lying itself, because spinning the truth is part of the job description, and always has been. It was that she never once, that I can recall, admitted she or her boss had gotten something wrong.
When pushed and pushed, every contradiction and every confrontation got reframed as a media conspiracy. Every scandal became evidence that she and Trump were the real victims of a media cabal that was out to get them both.
And I genuinely believe the job made her worse as a person. It hollowed out whatever instinct toward honesty she might have started with and replaced it with something that was unappealing and unforgivable.
Now, think about this. The truly awful part isn't Leavitt's exit, no, it’s who will replace her. How do you hire someone with a job prerequisite of being a habitual liar, loathsomely dishonest and a mean and angry person? The repulsive Steve Cheung is the communications director, and he would be your boss.
I cannot think of a worse job on Earth. Imagine being surrounded by disgusting human beings Trump and Cheung? I am convulsively sick thinking about it.
As for Leavitt herself, wherever she lands, the prevaricating skills she perfected at that podium will travel with her, so don't expect some sort of reckoning. But even if she did have a come-to-Jesus moment, and was suddenly repentant, would you even believe her?