Don't let the door...
14/08/26 07:01
August 14, 2026 (Vol. 20 No. 30) — I can't say that our long national nightmare is over, but at least its chief mouthpiece is headed out the door. In a presidency that has "distinguished" itself with a series of inept and incompetent press secretaries, Karoline Leavitt takes the cake. In the grand tradition of her predecessors Sean Spicer, Anthony Scaramucci and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Karoline Leavitt has used her position at the White House podium to spread unadulterated lies and to hurl insults at anyone who questions the "greatness" of her boss, the President of the United States. Leavitt, who at 28 is the youngest person to serve in that critically important role, is also the least qualified and talented to ever hold that position. She makes Ron Ziegler, Richard Nixon's spokesman, appear to be the model any self-respecting press secretary should hope to attain. And isn't that the rub? How can this sycophantic and naive woman-child have any self-respect after spewing out the most inane and blatantly false platitudes designed for just one twisted purpose: To please the fragile ego of Donald J. Trump? What can you expect from a woman who married for the money a man 32 years her elder? Now she is leaving her plush post, ostensively to raise her newborn child. I sincerely wish her luck in that endeavor. I also hope she approaches motherhood a hell of a lot more seriously than she did her White House job.
If it sounds like I am taking Ms. Leavitt's ineptitude personally, you are damned right I am. I have spent most of my adult life either serving as a government spokesman or training the next generation of public relations practitioners and public affairs specialists. Practically everything this woman has done has discredited the profession. In the textbook Public Relations: A Values Drive Approach, co-author Chuck Marsh and I defined public relations as "the values-driven management of relations between an organization and the publics important to its success." Key words in that definition are management, values and relations. Even the most casual observer can see that those are three qualities sorely lacking in the Trump White House.
Throughout the first 18 months of President Pinocchio's second term, Karoline Leavitt has been the face and voice of a dumpster fire. Considering Trump's penchant for making late-night grand social media policy pronouncements while sitting on his golden toilet, it has been painfully apparent that Ms. Leavitt's position is totally superfluous. There is no evidence to suggest that she made an attempt to do what any good press secretary would do, trying to develop a cogent and consistent administration message through a professional relationship with the working press. Instead, her first instinct has been to echo the demonstratively false diatribes of the Count of Mar-a-Lardo. Even more irritating is that she has done it with a cheeky smile on her face. In short, instead of serving the American people as a spokesperson adept at explaining administration policies, all we got from the Trump White House was a Beauty School Dropout.
Yes, I sincerely hope she is successful in her now chosen role as wife and mother. I do not wish ill-will upon her. But I also hope that she doesn't let the door hit her in the butt as she exits what's left of the White House. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.