By Laura Beers
During a press conference on Dec. 11, 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced there was good news on the state of the economy.
“Inflation as measured by the overall CPI has slowed to an average 2.5% pace,” she said, referring to the consumer price index. “Real wages are increasing roughly $1,200 dollars for the average worker.”
When CNN political correspondent Kaitlan Collins attempted to ask a follow-up question, Leavitt pivoted to an attack. Not on Collins, a frequent target of White House ire, but on Leavitt’s predecessor in the Biden White House, Democrat Jen Psaki.
Psaki, claimed Leavitt, stood at the same lectern a year before and told “utter lies.” In contrast, Leavitt insisted, “Everything I’m telling you is the truth backed by real, factual data, and you just don’t want to report on it ’cause you want to push untrue narratives about the president.”
The “real, factual data” that underpinned Leavitt’s statement was specious at best. The actual inflation rate for September was 3%, not the 2.5% figure cherry-picked from economic data. The rise in real wages? CNN business editor David Goldman writes that in the past year, U.S. workers have experienced “the lowest annual paycheck growth that Americans have had since May 2021.”
I’m a historian who has written about the enduring legacy of George Orwell’s ideas about truth and freedom. Listening to Leavitt assert a “truth” so obviously discordant with people’s lives, I was reminded of the repeated pronouncements from the Ministry of Plenty in Orwell’s “1984.”
“The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen,” Orwell wrote. “As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards.”
The novel’s doomed hero, Winston Smith, works in the Records Department that produces these fraudulent statistics – figures that are so far divorced from reality that they “had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie.”
In the world of “1984,” not only are statistics invented, they are continually reinvented to serve the needs of Big Brother’s regime at any given moment: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”
Transparency as doublespeak
The lack of transparency depicted in “1984” has an uncanny echo in our current political moment, despite Leavitt’s repeated assertions that President Donald Trump is the “most transparent president in history.”
Leavitt has made that claim countless times, including in her public defense of Trump’s “Quiet, Piggy!” dismissal of Bloomberg News journalist Catherine Lucey last month.
In Leavitt’s usage, “transparency” has become a form of Orwellian “doublespeak,” a word or phrase which through the process of “doublethink” had come to encompass its exact opposite meaning.
“Doublethink,” in Orwell’s writing, was the mechanism of thought manipulation that allowed someone “to know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.”
Doublethink was the mechanism that enabled the citizens of Oceania, the Anglo-American superstate governed by Big Brother’s authoritarian regime, to accept that “WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
And it is the mechanism that allowed Leavitt to proclaim, in defending Trump’s unwillingness to release the Epstein files, “This administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever.” That claim was pronounced “fabulously audacious” by The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, in a story headlined “Nothing to see here: Trump press chief in full denial mode over Epstein.”
Making ‘lies sound truthful and murder respectable’
In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell wrote that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Over the past 10 months, Leavitt has, among other things, claimed that the now dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development – USAID – provided a grant of $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru. Not true. She has misrepresented the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as fully eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security. In reality, deductions for these are capped. She claimed that Trump coined the motto “peace through strength.” He didn’t. The phrase has been in circulation for decades, used most prominently by Ronald Reagan during his presidency.
And she recently sought to delegitimize U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and colleagues’ plea to servicemen and women not to obey illegal orders by suggesting tautologically that “all lawful orders are presumed to be legal by our servicemembers,” and hence Kelly’s plea could only serve to provoke “disorder and chaos.”
All governments lie. But Leavitt has become a master of the art of political language, wielded to aggrandize her boss, belittle his opponents and deflect attention from administration scandals.
Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Laura Beers is Professor of History at American University.
Deborah Coffey says
At this point in time, it is best to believe that everything said by everyone in this entire administration is an outright lie…everything. And, the fish does rot from the head. It’s probably time to begin building a prison that will hold everyone chosen by, and involved with, Donald J. Trump. When we return to power, it would be wrong to pollute our existing prisons with these scumbags because they comprise the most incredible group of lawless anti-Americans in our country’s almost 250 years.
Laurel says
Twenty-three thumbs up, and two likes, in Flagler County! Yes!
A Republic if you can keep it. says
The candidate for president of the United States of America said ; “ I love the poorly educated” . Even someone with limited education knows that when you get a 100% reduction on anything , IT’S FREE. Anything other than that means that you’re getting money back. Why does the president in a speech to the nation say that “ he negotiated 200%, 400%, even 600% reduction in some cases in drug prices? So you’re getting money for buying medicine . It’s because when you repeat lies over and over and over you believe they become true. The nazis did it, the communist do it , the Trump administration did not invent this. When your government website says that 11 million people reached and crossed the border ( many to be returned back ) , why do you say 25 million crossed last year , mostly criminals ? Why not just say our immigration enforcement has been a success , greatly eliminating crossings. Why lie? Why tell people that gas is $1.99 in some places and the avg is $2.50 when yesterday it was $2.99.9 ? Is it over $3.00 today in Flagler county ? It’s embarrassing to most and even those of us that don’t have a MBA and shop for food, insurance, gifts know he is lying totally disrespectful to his followers.
Michael Cocchiola says
Seems that a Dunning/Kruger effect is running rampant through the White House. Their lying is endemic but sloppy. The truth is out there.
I’d advise everyone to take the administration’s communications with a ton of salt, but always be aware that if what they say appears bad for America, it’s probably what they’re going to do.
Skibum says
Every time she steps up to that podium, Leavitt might as well be reading from one of the brothers Grimm fairy tales, for all of the made up nonsensical disinformation she is directed to shovel out to the American public to make her convicted felon pedophile protecting boss look good despite all of the damage he is causing to the economy, our Constitution and the rule of law, and our world standing. When, or if, the orange-faced terror is finally out of the WH, America will be lucky if this country doesn’t resemble one of his bankrupt casinos instead of the nation it has taken us nearly 250 years to become.
And little Miss Muffet giddily stands up there with that cross draped around her neck talking shit like she is adoringly speaking for St. Christopher instead of what the current occupier of the WH really is… one of the MOST despicable, unrepentant fraudsters ever to soil the WH furniture in the long history of our nation!
Laurel says
I would hope that some of you now understand my frustration with your insistence that what is happening to our country now is somehow good. I read George Orwell’s “1984,” published in 1949, when I was a teenager. It left quite the impression on me. When the real year 1984 came and went, I was actually relieved! I started seeing what Reagan was doing back in the 70’s, but it was nowhere near as disconcerting as Trump, showing his indifference to logic, compassion and empathy, over ten years ago. So, to me, he was quite blatant, and it was, and is, mind blowing that anyone would consider his “weave” anything but wrong, and dangerous. He told us he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. He was serious.
There had never been anyone, as a press secretary, as nasty as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, until now. Karoline Leavett has actually outdone her. She spews out lies, hits the favorite buzzwords, such as Biden, whom apparently they have lied about so much that it came believable, all with the Christian cross of Jesus around her neck, laying on her lying chest. When you look, and listen to these people, the saying “Fascism will come wrapped in a flag, and carrying a bible” comes to life.
What is incomprehensible is that the so called news companies, such as Fox Entertainment, Newsmax, and so on, along with the podcasters who back up this awful condemning of our wonderful country, is allowed, and believed. The standard news companies of the past (which still exist) would never, ever stand for this, or report this behavior as something normal or good. Now we have social media that comes from, sometimes, dark spaces in the world to divide us up. It is truly sad.
If you have never read “1984” I highly recommend you do it now. What is happening now, to our country, is not somehow good.
Bo Peep says
She is wonderful compared to the previous two lying sacks of a press secretary. Liberals are so funny.
PaulT says
Sadly, Bo Peep seems to have lost more than her sheep.
Jim says
Bo Peep is one of the sheep.
Pogo says
@What dialect
… of what dead language, is Bo Peep: a fool? Is Bo Peepest the superlative?
Sincerely,
Yo Mama
Sherry says
bo peep. . . words of complete garbage from a radicalized AI driven “Trollbot”!
Kennan says
Beautiful!
Keep dropping truth bombs on this nut bag.
Carolyne Levitt is an example of someone in a high-powered position that’s never had a thought of her own.
What is she 26, 27, 28? She looks like a 40 something year-old with resting bitch face.
This is what happens when you troll out that much hatred and lies on a daily basis.
Makes you age fast.
Feddy says
Yea I miss the two previous White House press secretaries, was like watching comedy central. Circle back around.
BillC says
Like Sean Spicer? He was hilarious…
ric santo says
Conservative MAGotts are so clueless that many of them here in Flagler believe Bo Peep’s sheepshit!
Pogo says
@No more genocide Joe
What else matters?
Eat your own cooking — it’s all there is.
Pogo says
@All the votes
… of the Yes Men have been counted. All that’s left now is to enjoy your victory — should be no trouble to bear to the celebration; hollow, thin things are seldom much burden — even to the faintest. And no weight will be gained from consuming all of nothing.
Sherry says
Thanks for the comments from all those still living in “fact based reality”! As for ole Karoline. . . just pick up a copy of Orwell’s 1984 and you will recognize her “evil” character immediately! The purveyor of “alternative facts” in Maga’s demented world!
For the sake of your family and own tenuous grasp on “reality”. . . please remember/learn “critical thinking” skills and do your own balanced, in depth, research before attaching any information to your life’s perceptions. Don’t let trump’s con artists continue to dupe and indoctrinate you into becoming completely under their control!