Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck keeps up his fawning over White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a March 4 post:
Late in what was otherwise a surprisingly respectful White House press briefing on Wednesday afternoon, former conservative reporter-turned-CNN liberal Kaitlan Collins disgustingly claimed to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s comments hours earlier about the press fixating negative stories about the Iran mean the administration doesn’t want the media to cover the upcoming dignified transfer for six American heroes lost thus far in the war.
Collins — with her inability to show little emotion besides robotic annoyance — huffed: “You just mentioned the President is going to attend the dignified transfer for these families. Given what Secretary Hegseth said this morning, is it the position of this administration that the press should not prominently cover the deaths of U.S. service members?”
Shocked as anyone would be, Leavitt made the obvious distinction between honoring the fallen and the reality that the administration believes “the press in this room and the press across the country should accurately report on the success of Operation Epic Fury and the damage it is doing to the rogue Iranian regime that has threatened the lives of every single American in this room.”
Collins continued to be purposefully dense: “But Secretary Hegseth was complaining that it was front page news about these six service members who were killed.”
Leavitt stated another obvious point that this was “not what the secretary said” or “meant and you know it.”
“You know, you’re being disingenuous,” she added and tried to continue with the claim America’s “never had a secretary of defense who cares more” about the soldiers than Hegseth, but Collins wouldn’t let her finish and read the quote aloud.
“He said, ‘when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the President look bad.’ As you know, we cover the deaths of U.S. service members under every president,” Collins groused.
Leavitt then dropped the hammer on the CNN tool by telling her “[t]he press does only want to make the President look bad” and “especially you and especially CNN” .] […]
In reality, Hegseth was making an allusion to the doom porn the press have been trigger happy to deploy in the early days of the war (such as here from Tuesday night on ABC).
Houck also made sure to give some love to right-wing reporters in the room: “On an important, non-Iran-related topic, our friend Reagan Reese of the Daily Caller brought up the SAVE Act.”
Craig Bannister served up a March 10 CNSNews propaganda piece starring Leavitt:
Democrats created, and media have promoted, the myth that the SAVE America Act’s voter I.D. requirement would make it harder for married women to vote, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explained at a press event Tuesday.
“One of the biggest things the Democrats are saying, the claims they’re making, is that the SAVE America Act, it would prevent married women from voting in elections or make it harder for them,” a reporter told Leavitt, asking if the allegations are true.
“There is zero validity to these claims,” Leavitt said, noting that the Democrats’ false narrative has been advanced by the media:
[…]It’s actually Democrats, not Republicans, who are working to disenfranchise voters, Leavitt said:
In fact, the SAVE America Act could, in fact, make it more difficult for married women to vote. But Bannister quoted only Leavitt and no opposing view.
Mark Finkelstein was upset that a reporter’s exchange with Leavitt was brought up:
On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough blithely delivered his legal judgment on potential U.S. strikes against Iranian infrastructure, declaring: “that’s a war crime, by the way.”
The remark came after a clip of NBC correspondent Garrett Haake pressing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on President Trump’s warning that Iran should make a deal or face overwhelming U.S. military force.
HAAKE: “Why is the president threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the U.S. military?”
LEAVITT: “…the United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination, and the president is not afraid to use them.”
Co-host Mika Brzezinski framed the exchange as involving possible U.S. attacks on “civilian infrastructure.”
Scarborough’s response was categorical:
SCARBOROUGH: “That’s a war crime, by the way.”
The self-described “simple country lawyer” rendered his verdict with unequivocal certainty.
That kind of certainty disregards the actual legal standard. Under the Geneva Conventions, attacking infrastructure is not automatically a war crime if it serves a military purpose or qualifies as a dual-use target, subject to proportionality and necessity. Oil infrastructure, in particular, can directly fund and sustain a nation’s military operations—making it a classic dual-use target and a logical focus of wartime strategy.
Moreover, in the current conflict, the U.S. military has explicitly warned Iranian civilians in advance of potential strikes.
[…]That stands in stark contrast to World War II. The firebombing of Dresden killed an estimated 25,000 people, while the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 170,000 by the end of 1945, including tens of thousands killed instantly—without comparable advance warnings to civilian populations.
But on Morning Joe, Scarborough reduced that complexity to a single, five-word verdict.
So one only has to advise civilians of potential destruction to their infrastructure to avoid committing a war crime? Interesting.