"The youngest White House press secretary in US history" is Trump's Keroline Leavitt, notes the BBC. I note its additional observation: The second youngest was Dick Nixon's Ron Ziegler. You get my point. I can't say if it was the BBC's.
Leavitt is all of 27-years-old. Throughout the last nine of those years, rather than learning about the world she steeped herself in Orwellian indoctrination. In college she interned at Fox News and in the first Trump administration's press office. Right out of college she became — this is either astonishing or a "makes sense" revelation — a presidential speechwriter. Then on to assistant press secretary, a failed congressional run, and now this, a veritable robot, programmed in Newspeak.
Just as Trump violated his oath of office upon being sworn in — see: disregard of preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution — on Day One Leavitt violated her duty as a White House press secretary, that of providing at least remotely truthful information. Said she:
There has never been a president who communicates with the American people and the American press corps as openly and authentically as the 45th and now 47th president.
Eleven days into office this open, authentic communicator evicted the The New York Times, National Public Radio, Politico and NBC News from their Pentagon workspaces; seven days after the Senate confirmed his boy at DoD, Pete Hegseth. In furtherance of open communication, the Pentagon memo announcing the eviction said "no additional information will be provided at this time."
It added that four major news sources have been tossed "in order to broaden access ... to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege." And for good reason. Among the Pentagon newbies are One America News Network, Breitbart News Network and the New York Post.
On her first p.s. day, Leavitt, having majored in both Newspeak and Doublespeak, declared that only "the most competent, the best and the brightest" will serve in the Trump administration. As hilariously tortured as the remark was — for Christ's sake one need look no further than Hegseth — not even under the pains of the rack did it confess to only the most competent sycophants covering the Defense Department from here on out.
More up-to-date, yesterday Leavitt confirmed Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico (still waiting on the claim), purportedly to force both nations into, among other things, more effective blocking of fentanyl's entry into the U.S. This, she repeated.
In 2020 Congress established a commission to investigate means by which the flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the U.S. could be reduced. One of its finding is of greater interest today than in 2022, when the investigation concluded. I quote from the commission's report: “Canada is not known to be a major source of fentanyl, other synthetic opioids or precursor chemicals to the United States, a conclusion primarily drawn from seizure data." Such as?
From the Times: "The quantities of fentanyl leaving Canada for the United States are minuscule — 0.2 percent of what is seized at the U.S. southern border.... Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents intercepted about 19 kilograms of fentanyl at the northern border, compared with almost 9,600 kilograms at the border with Mexico." What's more, this morning the Times' Canada Letter reports that there is, and I quote, nothing like the flow of illegal drugs into Canada from the United States.
Only hours after Leavitt's p.s. debut, her president — the one whom she celebrated for communicating "with the American people openly and authentically" — said "the fentanyl coming through Canada is massive." Dissatisfied, I gather, with merely his own lie, Trump enlisted his Commerce secretary nominee, Howard Lutnick, to double down. "Canada," he said, "if we are your biggest trading partner, show us the respect. Shut your border and end fentanyl coming into this country."
In the opening I granted Karoline Leavitt the widest possible duty of any president's press secretary: to act as a source of at least remotely true information. I must now act as a source of incontestable truth: She's too far gone; in her tenderest, most impressionable and vulnerable years she allowed her mind's absorption by the Orwellian Borg of pseudoconservative Republicanism.
Not that this truth is any news. It's just the Trumpian way.
Comments