It’s been a while since we checked in on Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck’s year of fangirling over new White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt as she slowly turns herself into the Trump White House’s equivalent of the North Korean news lady in terms of mindlessly spouting pure propaganda. He gushed in a March 5 post:
Wednesday’s White House press briefing began with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt touting the findings of a CBS News/YouGov flash poll showing a whopping 76 percent of those who saw President Trump’s Tuesday night address to a joint session of Congress liked what they saw, but also ripping CNN’s Chyron Boy and MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace for their rank liberal bias.
After hyping how right-wing reporter Mary Margaret Olohan of the Daily Wire sitting in the “new media” seat and touting the arrival of his mancrush in “Doocy Time,” Houck briefly noted a couple questions about tariffs. But he censored the fact that when Leavitt asserted that there has been “more than a 2,000 percent increase in illegal fentanyl seizure at the northern border,” NBC reporter Gabe Gutierrez pointed out that it was just 43 pounds seized on the Canadian border, compared with more than 21,000 pounds seized on the southern border, prompting Leavitt to rage in response, “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!”
For all of his fangirling, though, the volume of posts by Houck on Leavitt’s briefings is much less that it was under the previous press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre — presumably because he’s not allowed to insult and denigrate Leavitt the way he did to Jean-Pierre, though it also appears that Leavitt holds fewer briefings. Still, he did serve up the required fangirling in a few posts throughout the rest of March:
- WH’s Leavitt Praises WashPost Changes, Battles AP, CNN, Politico on Tariffs
- WH’s Leavitt Fields Hardballs on Deportations, Uses Doocy Time to Zing French
Houck wrote this in a March 19 post that asserted “This Isn’t Hard, Liberals”:
For only the second time since the week of January 26, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt held a second briefing of a week. Along with our friend Katie Pavlich of Townhall having the chance to sit in the “new media seat,” she and other conservative reporters showed the liberal reporters it’s not that hard to ask real questions of your own “side” on issues ranging from crime to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to immigration to the judiciary.
However, all he did is show Pavlich serving up softballs for Leavitt to hit out of the park — the kind of thing Houck attacked non-right-wing reporters for doing under a Democratic president. And that was the last briefing Houck wrote up for the month — because he doesn’t write up other Leavitt availabilities, he ignored a March 27 incident on the White House driveway in which Leavitt had a meltdown over unfavorable polling on defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signalgate scandal.
Meanwhile, Tim Graham spent a March 16 post whining that Leavitt gets fact-checked:
PolitiFact, the Poynter Institute’s liberal-tilting “independent fact-checking” website, has given White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt a third fact-check within her first two months at the podium — two False ratings and one Half True. On March 13, Lou Jacobson threw a False flag for Leavitt fighting with AP reporter Josh Boak, where she claimed “Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people.”
The first two fact checks came on January 28.
Biden’s first press secretary Jen Psaki has two — one False and one True. Psaki drew her first fact check on November 18, 2021 — almost ten months into her tenure. She was never tagged while she was State Department Press Secretary under John Kerry in the Obama years, and hasn’t been tagged for anything she’s said as an MSNBC host.
We can guess that Leavitt will soon surpass the other Biden press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, who has four fact-checks — two Mostly True and two False.
Graham did not prove any of those fact-checks of Leavitt to be wrong — he’s simply whining that she’s being held accountable.