The Media Research Center’s Curtis Houck unsurprisingly fawned over Karoline Leavitt when she was named Donald Trump’s press secretary. With her first briefing, however, Houck’s gushing went off the charts in a Jan. 28 post:
In the first the first White House press briefing of President Donald Trump’s second term, Press Secretary Karoline Levaitt made clear from the onset of the 46-minute-and-36-second briefing things would be different inside the Brady Briefing Room. Along with the opening and closing statements made famous by Kayleigh McEnany, Leavitt announced seats for new media and called on 21 different reporters from 20 outlets.
Overall, Leavitt was declarative in her answers, firm in her interactions with reporters (even though there were no scintillating duels), and substantive to the point it felt like a firehose. In other words, a total opposite of the bumbling, sometimes incoherent partisan mumbling by Karine Jean-Pierre.
She even conducted the briefing without a thick binder of notes (opting instead for only a few pieces of paper), nearly going full Amy Coney Barrett.
It started with a lengthy opening statement about cabinet nominees, a recap of President Trump’s first week in office, and graphic details about the criminal records of just a small sampling of illegal immigrants captured in Immigration Customs & Enforcement (ICE) raids:
The difference, which Houck failed to mention, is that Jean-Pierre was actually trying to impart useful information to journalists, while all her “substantive” and “declarative” statement in Houck’s eyes is simply about loudly and assertively lecturing and pushing narratives that Houck has no interest in fact-checking. Indeed, Houck was so dedicated to that narrative that he devoted one very lengthy tweet to transcribing her opening rant. Indeed, Houck filled his posts with more uncritical transcriptions of Leavitt.
Curiously, Houck failed to mention one instance in which Leavitt got her facts wrong. She claimed during the briefing that “DOGE and OMB also found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza. That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.” Houck curiously didn’t clip this statement — perhaps because even he knows it’s false.
It appears Houck was too busy slobbering over right-wing reporters getting the chance to ask questions. He gushed that Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich “respectfully grilled her on the administration revoking security details for Trump critics who remain under threat of Iranian assassination plots,” then cheering that “our friend Reagan Reese of the Daily Caller remarkable was called out by name with Leavitt acknowledging the last administration’s lack of (consistent) attention to the back rows:” That was followed by snping at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “who worked for the Caller before becoming a CNN liberal and has returned to the White House beat.”
Houck huffed that “The briefing ended with the Washington Examiner’s Christian Datoc, who somehow (and shamefully) had the only question about the soaring costs of eggs,” followed by more Fox News praise of Leavitt:
Fox News Channel host Jimmy Failla had it right in reviewing Leavitt’s performance. Roughly 30 minutes in, he quipped Leavitt didn’t seem to have “looked up a single answer” where as Jean-Pierre “would have gone through three binders and a Magic 8 Ball by now,” thus showing “why people wanna ditch DEI for Meritocracy.”
We doubt that Faila, like Houck, bothered to fact-check anything Leavitt said. They were too busy drooling over how she mindlessly sticks to the approved narrative.