White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's aggressive browbeating of reporters before Donald Trump's Thursday night address has spectacularly backfired, with a former Trump State Department official tearing apart her credibility in a scathing column.
Matthew Bartlett, who held a Trump-appointed position at the State Department, condemned Leavitt's Thursday comments to journalists who tried to ask her substantive questions about the president's planned remarks.
As Bartlett describes it, Leavitt condescendingly lectured them on "honesty and integrity" and demanded they wait to hear Trump's speech before forming conclusion.
"I think that everyone should tune in tonight," Leavitt snapped, "including the people in this room, and you should report on the president's speech and the findings that he is going to reveal in the speech with a little bit of honesty and a little bit of integrity because … it will shock you if you have an honest eye listening to the president tonight."
Bartlett argued it was "shocking" indeed — but there was one problem.
"Leavitt said earlier that the speech would be shocking," he wrote. "True, but not in the way she meant. While the president’s goal may have been to destroy faith in our elections, it may have succeeded in destroying whatever faith is in the president."
Bartlett then commented on his own lack of shock at the speech — and threw both Trump's and Leavitt's credibility into doubt.
"A seemingly tired president appeared to struggle to read the speech, which aides had previewed as a “potpourri” of topics, but was more accurately a mishmash of MAGA buzzwords," Bartlett wrote.
"There were no charges announced. No arrests made. Nothing that would refute the simple fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The election of 2020 remains as controversial as the sky being blue and water being wet."