Karoline Leavitt

Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people.

Karoline Claire Leavitt (born August 24, 1997) is an American political spokesperson who has served since 2025 as the 36th White House press secretary under the second Trump administration. A member of the Republican Party, she was a candidate for New Hampshire's 1st congressional district in the 2022 election.

Quotes

Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question.

• It’s very easy to speak truth from this podium when you have a president who is implementing policies that are wildly popular with the American people, and that’s exactly what this administration is doing. It’s correcting the lies and the wrongs of the past four years, many of the lies that have been told to your faces in this very briefing room. I will not do that.
  • "Press briefing by press secretary Karoline Leavitt" The White House (January 29, 2025)

• You’re asking me for what the president’s justification is for these tariffs. It’s not up to you. You’re not the president, Gabe!
  • "Trump Press Secretary Lashes Out at Reporter in Bizarre Tariff Defense" New Republic (March 5, 2025)

• Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people.
  • "Leavitt earns third PolitiFact check, exceeding career total of predecessor Jen Psaki" KOMONEWS (March 18, 2025)

Summer 2025

• [The big beautiful bill] does not add to the deficit.
  • "Karoline Leavitt said Donald Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ won’t add to the deficit. But it will." Politfact (May 21, 2025)

• nationwide injunctions ordered against the first Trump administration, Trump 1.0, account for more than half of the injunctions issued in this country since 1963. And President Trump had more injunctions in one full month of office, in February, than Joe Biden had in three years.
  • "Karoline Leavitt White House Press Briefing on 5/29/25" rev (May 29, 2025)

• Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question.
  • "Leavitt slams ‘stupid question’ about Trump’s threat to protesters" The Hill (June 11, 2025)

• Nobody knows what it means to accomplish peace through strength better than President Trump. He is the one who came up with that motto, and that foreign policy doctrine, and he successfully implemented it in his first term.
  • "Karoline Leavitt Gets Instant Fact-Check After Outrageous New Claim About Trump" AOL (June 24, 2025)

• [Donald Trump] knows what his supporters want. It’s transparency, and he has given them that on all accounts when it comes to everything this administration has done.
  • "'Opposite Of Reality': Critics Torch Karoline Leavitt's Bold New Claim About Trump" Yahoo News | Huffington Post (July 22, 2025)

Fall 2025

• The hoax is the Democrats pretending to care about victims of crime, when they do not care about victims of crime, when they have to done nothing to solve crimes, when they have done nothing to lock up child pedophiles and child rapists around the country. It is a distraction. The Democrats view the story as nothing more than an attempt to distract from the accomplishments and achievements of this administration. And that is what we mean when we call it a hoax.
  • Stop calling the Epstein story a hoax. Chris Cillizza (Sept 11, 2025)

2026

About the US attack on Iran:

• That formal authorization from Congress is not necessary because we are currently in major combat operations in Iran"
  • "White House won’t seek congressional authorization for Iran war" Washington Times (March 25, 2026)

• If you’ve heard it from the president of the United States, obviously it’s true.
  • "Karoline Leavitt Cracks Up Critics With Her ‘Obviously...’ Defense Of Trump" Huffington Post (March 26, 2026)

Quotes about Leavitt

• The big, macho men from ICE who are storming around American cities like Visigoths are a bunch of cowards.
  They arm themselves as if they are battling ISIS terrorists in Iraq while the only threat they face is common American citizens with whistles and protest signs. They break into private homes without warrants, they gas school kids, they tackle women on the street, they smash into the cars of American citizens. And one of them summarily executed a mother of three children because -- well, because he could.
  They think they are tough, but they are punks hiding behind masks. They are poorly-trained thugs dressed up like real soldiers who think they are living out a video game where they get points for assaulting anyone who gets in their way. They are the farthest thing from the real cops who police communities with restraint, discipline and a knowledge of the law.These mercenaries do not serve the country, they serve a regime that excuses their unjustified violence and lies about their lawless actions. President Donald Trump falsely alleges that Renee Good, the mother of three gunned down in Minneapolis by an ICE agent, was a “professional agitator” who showed “disrespect” for law enforcement. His toady press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, who will say any despicable thing to please her boss, accused Good of being “a lunatic.” The Homeland Security boss, Kristi Noem, branded Good a “domestic terrorist.”
  There is zero evidence of any of the Trump administration’s slander. Renee Good was, indeed, out on the street to monitor the actions of ICE, but, as anyone can see in the video taken seconds before she was murdered, she was smiling at the ICE agents and telling them she was not mad at them. Good was, in fact, doing what she had been ordered to do, moving her vehicle out of the way.
  Trump and his team are even bigger cowards than the cosplay cops they have sent to terrorize immigrants and punish Democratic cities. It takes leaders with maturity and guts to admit fault and accept accountability. The cruel clowns in the White House will never be brave enough to do that.
  • David Horsey, "Trump and his cosplay cops are cowards", David Horsey's substack, 13 January 2026

External links

• Appearances on C-SPAN