Karoline Leavitt is twisting herself into knots to defend President Trump’s assault on free speech.
“Going back to the president’s social media posts from over the weekend regarding the DOJ and his seeming frustration that they hadn’t taken action quickly enough,” a reporter asked during Leavitt’s press briefing Monday, “I wanna point to something the president said during his inaugural address: ‘Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents. We will not allow that to happen.’ Is the president going back on his promise?”
Reporter: Trump, during his inaugural address said: Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents. Is the president going back on his promise?
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 22, 2025
Leavitt: No, he is fulfilling his promise… it is not weaponizing the DOJ to demand… pic.twitter.com/IhpDJO5YtD
Leavitt responded, “No. In fact the president is fulfilling his promise to restore a Department of Justice that demands accountability. It is not weaponizing the Department of Justice to demand accountability for those who weaponized the Department of Justice.” Her answer leaned on wordplay and spin, a rhetorical trick to disguise what was really going on.
Then she leaned into the therapy talk. “We are not going to tolerate gaslighting from anyone in the media from anyone on the other side who is trying to say that it’s the president who is weaponizing the DOJ…. You look at people like Adam Schiff, and like James Comey, and like Letitia James, who the president is rightfully frustrated [with]. He wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abused their power, who abused their oath of office to target the former president.”
By her framing, those who held Trump to account in the past—Letitia James, who won a fraud case against him; James Comey, who didn’t bend to Trump’s demands as FBI director; Adam Schiff, who played a central role in both impeachment trials—were all in the wrong. In MAGA-world, Trump has never done anything to warrant scrutiny, so now he has free license to go after them.
But the truth is clear: Leavitt is lying. The president is indeed using state power as a weapon against his political adversaries, and it extends far beyond the DOJ. Just last week, Trump pressured FCC Chair Brendan Carr to go after ABC and Jimmy Kimmel, while openly suggesting that unfavorable press coverage should be outlawed.
🚨Nothing to see here, just the president of the United States telling millions of Americans on national television that everything our ancestors fought for and all those who died fighting so that we should have a democracy is worth nothing.
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) September 19, 2025
My god. pic.twitter.com/kFrbWYDZOk
“Ninety-seven, 94, 95, 96 percent of the people are against me in the sense of the newscasts, are against me.… They’ll take a great story, and they’ll make it bad,” Trump said on Friday. “See, I think that’s really illegal, personally.”
If anyone is guilty of gaslighting here, it’s Trump and Leavitt. They are spinning reality on its head while pushing a dangerous crackdown on dissent.
