Smiling for the Fall: Karoline Leavitt and the Propaganda of Choice
From Goebbels to Trump: The Faces of Authoritarian Cheerleading, Then and Now
Karoline Leavitt stands at the White House podium with a polished grin, a cross around her neck, and a prayer in her pocket. Each day, she steps out not as a servant of truth, but as a cheerleader for authoritarianism, defending lawlessness as law, cruelty as compassion, and power as divine right.
She tells deliberate lies, not out of fear, not to feed her family, not to stay alive, but by choice.
She is not like Goebbels’ press agents, who faced imprisonment or worse if they failed to obey. She is not like the mid-level functionaries of Putin or Orban, who navigate tightly controlled states where deviation is met with surveillance, blacklisting, or exile.
Karoline Leavitt is free. She is wealthy. She is married into privilege. She could work anywhere.
And yet she chooses to lie, to fawn over a convicted sexual abuser and felon, to mock due process. She chooses to defend the illegal deportation of asylum seekers to foreign prisons and
to brush off the weaponization of the Department of Justice like it’s no big deal.
She prays before her briefings, but her prayers serve no God of mercy. They are not calls for wisdom or humility. They are whispered contracts with a false idol, Donald Trump, whose crimes she wraps in the language of patriotism and sanctity. She invokes faith to sanctify cruelty, wears a cross while justifying concentration camps, and smirks through questions about human rights violations like it’s just another Tuesday.
Goebbels had his army of smiling apologists too. They stood in front of microphones, wearing rosaries and armbands, explaining away the atrocities as “order,” the oppression as “law,” and the murders as “security.”
And when the Reich fell, they fled, were tried, imprisoned, or faded into shameful obscurity. History remembered them not for their polish or piety but for their complicity.
Karoline Leavitt chooses this path every day. She chooses the performance, the gaslighting. She chooses to call legal protections “abuse” and to call abuse “salvation.” She chooses to protect the golden calf instead of the Constitution.
She could have chosen decency, humanity, truth. But she didn't.
And when this regime ends, as it will, history will not forget her. She will not be rehabilitated.
She will not be respected. She will not be welcomed into the ranks of serious journalism, public service, or principled conservatism. No newsroom will touch her. No institution of integrity will hire her. No audience outside the dark corners of extremism will applaud her.
She will be remembered as a face of the fall. A willing servant of a lawless regime. A woman who could have done anything, and chose this.
As Bulls**t Barbie takes the podium with her sanctimonious attitude, it’s no surprise the White House press secretary is just another grifter in this corrupt administration. Karoline Leavitt’s failed 2022 run for Congress in New Hampshire received hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal donations she never paid back — a criminal offense under campaign finance law. According to TWO YEARS of reprimanding letters from the Federal Election Commission, Leavitt’s campaign frequently failed to follow basic legal guidelines. Her unsuccessful 2022 campaign still OWES $326,370 — to donors, companies, and vendors. Under the law, these refunds should have been issued within 60 days. But years later, the debts remain unpaid. Since the 27-year-old is married to a 59-year-old mogul worth $50 million there is no hardship for her to pay what is legally owed.
Touted as the youngest press secretary in history, she is more appropriately Bulls**t Barbie, the Mistress of Propaganda. Trump loves her haughty, nasty, and dismissive style at the podium, but it has not earned the respect of the White House press corps which she has antagonized by demeaning their questions, restricting access, and threatening expulsion of any organizations that criticize the president or his policies. Perhaps she believes her blond beauty queen demeanor (and her glaringly obvious gold cross necklace) are absolution for her lack of respect for members of the Press — and also her unprofessional rudeness to the American public that both she and the president SERVE.
Her complete disregard for “free speech” as guaranteed in the First Amendment is on par with the threats and lies of Hitler’s propagandists. Maybe Karoline will learn nuance, humility, kindness, and courtesy in her priveleged role, but unfortunately those skills are not valued by her boss. Bulls**t Barbie’s gig didn’t end well for Goebbels in 1945; however, no one in this administration seems to be a student of history.
Leavitt graduated from a small Catholic college in New Hampshire in June 2019 — she has slim academic credentials and no professional experience aside from a brief stint after college working as an intern for strident Kayleigh McEnany in Trump’s first press corps. When Trump lost in 2020, Leavitt began working in communications for Elise Stefanik. In 2024, she joined the Trump campaign.
Leavitt is a professional lying psychopath, Just like the President she works for.