Trump Picks New Secretary Who Was Previously 'Censored' by CNN: The Media Should Be Horrified
You can say this much about Donald Trump’s pick for White House press secretary: It was positively Trumpian. And the media is probably going to be freaking out over it.
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign spokeswoman who went viral for getting kicked off of a CNN broadcast for angering the host, will be the first official mouthpiece of the second Trump administration.
“Karoline Leavitt did a phenomenal job as the National Press Secretary on my Historic Campaign, and I am pleased to announce she will serve as White House Press Secretary,” Trump said in a statement, according to Fox News.
“Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again.”
She had previously served as assistant press secretary in the first Trump administration when Kayleigh McEnany was the press secretary. She also ran for Congress in 2022 but lost in the general election.
Leavitt becomes the youngest White House press secretary at age 27, undercutting the previous holder — 29-year-old Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler — by two years.
However, the similarities between Ron and Karoline end there, and not just because of gender.
Ziegler is arguably best remembered for being overwhelmed by the press and hiding behind opaque non-answers. (Ziegler’s most famous quote, after Nixon got caught in one of the many lies about Watergate that led to the unraveling of his presidency: “The president refers to the fact that there is new material; therefore, this is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”)
This, meanwhile, was Leavitt speaking on CNN before the debate between Trump and Joe Biden back in June, where she cast doubt on the objectivity of the moderators:
JUST IN: President-elect Donald Trump announces that Karoline Leavitt will serve as White House Press Secretary.
Here is Leavitt getting kicked off of CNN after triggering CNN’s Kasie Hunt. pic.twitter.com/HWjEYy65t8
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 15, 2024
Leavitt had noted to CNN host Kasie Hunt that Trump was “knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network, on CNN, with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known over the past eight years and their biased coverage of him.”
After Hunt pushed back, saying that “Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have acquitted themselves as professionals as they have covered campaigns” — despite the fact that Tapper announced Joe Biden’s 2020 victory on air by saying that “for tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over,” among many, many other things — Leavitt noted that all anyone had to do to find out about the biases of the moderators was use a search engine.
“Well, first of all, it takes about five minutes to Google ‘Jake Tapper, Donald Trump’ to see that Jake Tapper has–” she said before Hunt cut her off.
It ended up not mattering, of course, because Biden was so senescent not even Jill and Hunter as moderators would have saved him. However, the clip — and the fact she got kicked off CNN — is a taste of what’s to come.
Appearing on Fox News on the same day of the Kasie Hunt incident, Leavitt was blunt about what sparked it.
“CNN censored me today because they can’t handle the truth,” she told host Sean Hannity. “They have been pushing lies about Donald Trump since he stepped into the arena years ago … we should not expect anything else from them.”
And now, at the end of this long campaign journey, Leavitt is going to be the one at the other end of the moderation equation, ensuring CNN doesn’t get the narrative they want out of White House press briefings.
Also, don’t think she’s forgotten what they put the former president through during the campaign, either.
“They forced him to take a mug shot. They tried to remove his name off of the ballot. They forced him to sit in a dirty courthouse for six weeks. Two people tried to kill him, for goodness sake,” Leavitt told Fox News after the election.
“And the American people see, in Donald Trump, is clear a leader who even in the darkest of times is going to lift his fist in the air and say, ‘fight, fight, fight’ for this country.”
And she’ll continue to fight along with him, it appears.
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