White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt struggled to keep her composure a recent press briefing, bristling and raising her voice when pressed with Donald Trump’s own words on the Department of Justice.
Leavitt denied President Trump is on a retribution campaign against his political opponents even though he clearly stated on his social media platform over the weekend that he expects his Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after them.
During Monday’s press briefing, a reporter asked Leavitt if Trump was going back on a promise he made during his inaugural address in January when he said, “Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents. We will not allow that to happen.”
“Is the President going back on his promise?” the reporter asked.
Leavitt, with barely concealed rage, twisted legitimate indictments and prosecutions of Trump into political vendettas, insisting Trump was somehow persecuted by former President Joe Biden through the DOJ.
“No. In fact, the President is fulfilling his promise to restore a Department of Justice that demands accountability, and it is not weaponizing the Department of Justice to demand accountability for those who weaponized the Department of Justice, and nobody knows what that looks like more than President Trump,” Leavitt snapped.
Leavitt chastised reporters for gaslighting while doing it herself and seemingly raising her voice in the process, “We are not going to tolerate gaslighting from anyone in the media or from anyone on the other side who is trying to say that it’s the president who is weaponizing the DOJ. It was Joe Biden and his attorney general who weaponized the DOJ.”
Needless to say, Leavitt’s gaslighting was called out on social media.
“This is insane: Asked if Trump reneged on his promise to stop weaponization of the DOJ, Karoline Leavitt says ‘No, he is fulfilling his promise…it is not weaponizing the DOJ to demand accountability…’ He just demanded Pam Bondi prosecute his enemies,” Really American pointed out on X.
“She’s got hives from the stress of tell lies,” one viewer observed.
“She actually had the audacity to say ‘We are not going to tolerate gaslighting,’ when that is literally all she does. She makes Kellyanne Conway look like a nun by comparison,” Brooklyn Dad Defiant responded.
Another X user agreed, “Gone from alternative facts to outright lying.”
This X user posted, “Accountability⁉️ Let him be the first to face his own accountabilities and stop pursuing vindictiveness on those who oppose him.”
Somehow the media took the blame for trying to manipulate the President’s threats against former FBI director James Comey, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Leticia James in his social post.
“He wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abused their power, who abused their oath of office to target the former president and then candidate for the highest office in the land … and the President has not been shy about this game,” she added.
Leavitt’s defense of Trump weaponizing the DOJ follows the Republican and MAGA belief that the twice-impeached Trump, who was criminally indicted four times in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, was the victim of a Democratic political witch hunt.
He was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents to cover up an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels and was also found liable last year for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in 1996.
An appeals court just upheld an $83 million defamation judgment against him in a related Carroll case.
