Trump Holds More Power Than Ever—So Why Is Karoline Leavitt Obsessed With Victimizing Him?

Leavitt, along with the entire Trump administration and MAGA movement, appears to be suffering from media derangement syndrome.

By Kylie Cheung  |  February 25, 2025 | 6:10pm
Screenshot: Whitehouse.gov Politics
Trump Holds More Power Than Ever—So Why Is Karoline Leavitt Obsessed With Victimizing Him?

On Monday evening, President Trump held a press conference alongside France’s Emmanuel Macron, largely to brag about how quickly his administration is destroying the country. The privilege of asking Trump the first question was bestowed upon none other than nepo boyfriend Brian Glenn, a “journalist” at the far-right propaganda peddler Real America’s Voice, who’s currently dating Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Meanwhile, the Associated Press remains barred from accessing the White House because they won’t call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced they’ll forego decades of tradition and handpick which journalists they’ll allow to ask questions. Trump has never held more power—over the country, over the media landscape, and over which journalists have access to him. But you wouldn’t glean that from listening to his press secretary Karoline Leavitt talk about the supposedly grueling ordeal of working for an administration so violently mistreated by the press.

“Unfortunately, the mainstream media has been blinded by this bias, this anti-Trump bias,” Leavitt told Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law, on her brand new show, My View With Lara Trump, that airs on Fox News, which is one of the largest news networks in the world. “And it’s actually quite sad because rather than dealing with people who are truly interested in journalistic integrity and finding out the truth in the facts, they’re coming into that room with a preconceived narrative and bias.” She then bemoaned that both Trump and her have faced this since the moment she entered the White House briefing room: “You know you’re going to face some hostile media, you know they’re coming for you.”

To state the obvious, if Trump were truly the victim Leavitt tries to paint him as, then she wouldn’t be speaking on a major network show with his name in the title. So, there’s that! Lara Trump is actually a fabulous example of how much power Trump and his family hold over not just the media but cultural institutions broadly: In addition to her new Fox show, Lara is wielding her last name to launch a pathetic attempt at a music career, despite having no music experience whatsoever. Pesky details aside, last week, she debuted a new song featuring French Montana. (I’ll spare you the listen: It was bad.)

Also this month, Trump fired the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, appointed himself as chair, and appointed a board of right-wing freaks with minimal to no experience in the industry. Trump loyalist Steve Bannon then announced that the “J6 choir” of insurrectionists is set to perform, though the center clarified over the weekend this isn’t yet a confirmed event. Speaking of Trump and his allies exerting power over popular culture: Earlier this month, the administration seemingly fired then immediately reinstated a DOGE staffer with an abhorrent, recent history of tweeting “normalize Indian hate” and other racist comments. Musk and Vice President JD Vance lobbied on social media for the staffer to be reinstated, speaking about his removal as if former President Biden had hired fired him. Except they’re the ones in power—and they’re the ones who’ve decided that slurs and bigotry are now entirely acceptable.

Still, Leavitt claims the media is “blinded by anti-Trump bias.” You have to laugh at this point. Fox News, which has served as Trump’s mouthpiece for the last decade, is more popular than ever. Elon Musk, the unelected billionaire Trump has empowered to destroy the government, owns Twitter, and by his own admission, amplifies and effectively forces his posts and those of other far-right influencers down our throats. And then, of course, as traditional news media continues to erode and podcasts and influencers rise as the primary source of news and information, there’s Trump’s iron-clad grip on what’s known as the “manosphere.” The vast network of popular influencers and podcasters, including Andrew and Tristan Tate as well as Adin Ross and the NELK Boys, peddled anti-feminist lies and coalesced around Trump’s 2024 campaign, for obvious reasons, which helped Trump surge in popularity among young men.

The cherry on top of Leavitt’s asinine remarks is that, just last week, Fox News’ Jesse Watters himself bragged at length about the right-wing takeover of the news media ecosystem: “We are waging a 21st-century information warfare campaign against the left,” he said. “Someone says something on social media, Musk retweets it, [Joe Rogan] podcasts it, Fox broadcasts it… and by the time it reaches everybody, millions of people have seen it.”

But don’t expect Leavitt to change her tune. Trump’s whole ethos, and that of the MAGA movement and right wing, writ large, relies on self-victimization, oft at the hands of their favorite, nebulous boogeyman: “the media.” In the Biden era, Trump and the right framed “the government” as a shadowy, conspiratory, anti-Trump institution. Now that Trump and his cronies are the government, their favorite talking points sound increasingly contradictory. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently told CNN’s Dana Bash, “We can’t trust the government anymore,” to which Bash responded, “But you are the government now.” Noem tried to spin her comments as referring to the residual, evil “DEI” programs planted by the Biden administration, which Musk and DOGE are now supposedly weeding out. But the contradiction stands. The right can’t quit critiquing the media ecosystem and the government, despite being the ones to now hold a chilling grip on the media ecosystem and the goveernment. 

“The president speaks the truth. He speaks his mind directly,” Leavitt concluded on Lara’s show. “It’s just my job to prepare and figure out what the truth is versus what the fake news narratives are, and then just bring that to the podium.”

These are the people framing diversity and inclusion initiatives as “victimizing” white men. These are the people who smear journalists asking routine questions about the Trump administration as bullies. These are the people who currently hold almost all institutional and narrative power—and are still too pathetic to present as anything but victims of their own imagined mistreatment. 

 
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