COLUMN: Karoline Leavitt and the Art of Rewriting History in Real Time

What Leavitt Actually Said

Let’s break down the mechanics. The allegation rests on a simple idea, almost childish in its construction: Trump’s political opponents allegedly used psychological manipulation techniques to alter his behavior, his statements, and even his cognitive abilities. Without evidence. Without an identified mechanism. Without citing any experts.

It’s the rhetorical equivalent of accusing someone of witchcraft. The charge is impossible to prove—but it’s also impossible to definitively refute, because it’s not based on anything tangible. You can’t prove the absence of something that’s never been defined.

The Political Function of the Unverifiable Lie

And yet, this allegation serves a specific purpose. It transforms every moment of inconsistency, every erratic statement, every factual confusion on the president’s part into evidence of external aggression. Trump isn’t wrong—he’s being manipulated. Trump isn’t rambling—his mind is being clouded.

It’s tactical genius in the service of an indefensible cause. The spokesperson doesn’t need people to believe in mind control. She needs them to doubt everything else.

A strategy borrowed from the tobacco and oil industries

Historians of disinformation will immediately recognize the playbook. It’s the one used by the tobacco industry in the 1960s: “Doubt is our product.” You don’t need to prove that tobacco is harmless. You need to sow enough confusion so that the public hesitates, regulators stall, and victims doubt their own suffering.

Karoline Leavitt applies this method to the cognitive functioning of the President of the United States. The issue is no longer public health—it is the health of democracy.

Doubt as a Paralyzing Force for Democracy

When every fact can be disputed, when every source can be discredited, when every expert can be accused of bias—the average citizen no longer knows what to trust. And that is exactly the goal. A confused voter is a manipulable voter. A disoriented public is a governable public.

Democracy does not die in darkness. It dies in the fog.

The Bipartisan Reaction

The phrase “yet another shameless lie,” which circulated on social media after Leavitt’s latest outburst, didn’t come only from Democrats. Moderate Republicans, conservative analysts, and even former Trump administration officials have expressed their unease. When your own allies roll their eyes, the message should be clear.

But the message isn’t getting through. Because Leavitt isn’t speaking to her critics. She’s speaking to the base. And the base doesn’t listen to conservative analysts—it listens to Fox News, Newsmax, and Truth Social accounts that amplify every allegation without filter.

The Economics of Outrage

Here’s the cruel paradox: every criticism reinforces the message. Every columnist who exposes the lie provides Leavitt with further proof that “the establishment” is trying to silence the truth. The mainstream media’s outrage is the fuel, not the brake.

And yet, failing to respond would be worse. Silence in the face of systemic lies is not wisdom—it is capitulation.

From Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Karoline Leavitt—A Methodical Escalation

Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied with an air of maternal weariness. Kayleigh McEnany lied with the smile of a TV news anchor. Sean Spicer lied with the visible sweat of a man who knew he was lying. Karoline Leavitt lies with the sincere conviction of a generation that grew up in an ecosystem where the line between fact and opinion has been methodically erased.

That is the fundamental difference. It is no longer cynicism—it is faith.

When Lies Become Doctrine

Every administration has had its spokespeople. Every spokesperson has embellished, downplayed, or misrepresented. That’s the game. But there used to be an invisible line—a boundary beyond which even the most loyal refused to go. That line no longer exists. It has been crossed, erased, and then denied to have ever existed.

And yet, some commentators continue to treat each new allegation as an aberration rather than a symptom. This isn’t a glitch. It’s the core feature.

Built for the Role

Karoline Leavitt didn’t end up at this podium by accident. A former Trump press aide, a congressional candidate in New Hampshire, and a rising star of millennial Trumpism—every step of her career has prepared her for this role. Not the role of spokesperson in the traditional sense, but the role of guardian of the narrative.

She doesn’t check whether what she says is true. She checks whether what she says is useful. The difference is vast.

The Human Cost of Total Loyalty

It would be easy to demonize Leavitt. Too easy. Behind the facade lies a 27-year-old professional who made a choice—the choice of absolute loyalty to a man rather than to principles. Thousands of others have made the same choice. Some have moved on. Others still bear the scars of their time in Trump’s orbit.

History will judge. But history has this unpleasant quirk: it doesn’t ask for your opinion before rendering its verdict.

The Unintentional Admission

Here is the irony that no one in the administration anticipated. By raising the allegation of mind control, Leavitt implicitly admitted that something required an explanation—that the president’s behavior was erratic enough to warrant looking for the cause somewhere other than within the individual himself.

If Trump were functioning perfectly, why fabricate an excuse? If his faculties were intact, why invoke external forces? The defense itself contains the admission it seeks to conceal.

The Paradox of Overprotection

The more Trump’s inner circle shields him from questions about his cognitive abilities, the more central those questions become. The more alternative explanations they fabricate, the more the public wonders what is being hidden from them. It’s the Streisand effect applied to the president’s mental health.

And yet, they continue. Because the alternative—admitting that the eighty-year-old president is showing signs of decline—is politically unthinkable.

Asking Questions of Someone Who Never Answers

White House correspondents live a daily professional nightmare. Their job is to get information. The person sitting across from them is tasked with never providing any. Not embellishing it—literally never providing it.

Every question is sidestepped. Every follow-up is cut off. Every fact is disputed. And at the end of the briefing, the news networks air the most explosive clips—giving Leavitt exactly the platform she was looking for.

The Trap of Real-Time Coverage

The media are caught in a trap they helped create. Covering a lie live means spreading it. Not covering it means failing to inform. Fact-checking after the fact means arriving too late—the lie has already spread faster than the correction.

And yet, they return every day. Because a free press cannot walk out of the room, even when the room has become a puppet theater.

Two Americas, Two Realities

The allegation of mind control does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of an ecosystem of beliefs in which millions of Americans sincerely believe that the deep state, the media, and universities are conspiring to destroy Trump. For these citizens, Leavitt is not lying—she is resisting.

The divide between these two Americas is no longer a political disagreement. It is an epistemological divorce. They no longer share the same facts, the same sources, or the same criteria for truth. They live in parallel universes that share the same geographical territory.

When Institutional Trust Collapses

According to Gallup, Americans’ trust in federal institutions has reached an all-time low. Fewer than 20% of citizens trust Congress. Fewer than 30% trust the presidency. Trust in the media ranges between 25% and 32%, depending on the pollster.

In this desert of trust, Leavitt’s claim does not need to be credible. It just needs to be less unbelievable than the alternative. And in a country where no one believes in anything anymore, even the most audacious lie eventually seems as plausible as the truth.

The Algorithm as a Multiplier of Lies

X (formerly Twitter), under Elon Musk’s leadership, has turned its algorithm into an amplification chamber for polarizing content. Leavitt’s claim didn’t need a promotional campaign—the algorithm took care of that. Every indignant retweet, every furious quote tweet, every debunking thread fed the beast.

Platforms are not neutral. They are the playing field. And right now, the playing field is tilted.

Speed vs. Truth

An MIT study published in Science demonstrated that false information spreads six times faster than verified information on social media. Six times. By the time a journalist verifies the claim, contacts the source, receives no response, and publishes their fact-check, the lie has already reached twenty million people.

And yet, fact-checking remains essential. Not because it convinces the believers—it never will. But because it provides an anchor for those who are still searching for the truth in the fog.

The Export of the Leavitt Model

Make no mistake. What’s happening in the White House press room isn’t an American phenomenon. It’s a prototype. European populist parties are watching, taking notes, and adapting. The Leavitt method—unabashed lies, unverifiable claims, and the leader’s constant portrayal as a victim—is exportable.

In France, Italy, and Hungary, political spokespeople are already testing the limits. Not with the same intensity—not yet. But the formula is the same. The techniques are identical. Only the accent changes.

The Democratic Vaccine

The only known antidote to institutional lies is a combination of three elements: a free and well-funded press, widespread media literacy, and independent judicial institutions. When one of these three pillars weakens, the others are no longer enough.

The United States of 2025 is seeing all three pillars attacked simultaneously. This is no coincidence—it’s a plan.

Signs of Wear and Tear in the Machine

The strategy of constant lying has a structural flaw: it requires constant escalation. Each claim must be bolder than the last to hold people’s attention. From the size of inaugural crowds to mind control—the intensity curve cannot rise indefinitely without credibility collapsing, even among supporters.

Recent polls show that even among self-identified Republicans, trust in official White House statements is eroding. Not massively. Not dramatically. But enough to worry strategists.

When the Base Begins to Doubt

The greatest danger to the administration isn’t the Democratic opposition—it’s the silent doubt within its own base. The voter who doesn’t switch sides but stays home on Election Day. The one who continues to wear the red cap but no longer defends the claims at the family dinner table.

That doubt is invisible in the polls. It only shows up at the ballot box. And by the time it does, it’s too late to fix it.

Who is protecting the spokesperson from herself?

There’s one question that editorialists avoid—perhaps out of modesty, perhaps out of calculation. Who protects Karoline Leavitt? Not the public figure—the person. The one who goes home after lying in front of cameras watched by millions of people. The one who checks her phone and sees her name associated with the words “shameless lie” in forty languages.

The story of Trump’s press secretaries is a story of destruction. Sean Spicer. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Kayleigh McEnany. Stephanie Grisham—who ended up writing a tell-all book. Each entered the role with a promising career and left with a ruined reputation.

The Choice That Isn’t a Choice

Leavitt is twenty-seven years old. In twenty years, when historians write about this period, her name will be in the footnotes. Not as a heroine. Not as a victim. As a pawn.

And yet, she could have chosen differently. Dozens of talented young Republicans refused to serve this administration. They chose silence over lies. Marginalization over compromise. No one will ever force them to regret that choice.

We get the spokespeople we tolerate

Karoline Leavitt isn’t the problem. She’s the symptom. The problem is a political system that rewards lies, a media ecosystem that amplifies them, and an audience that absorbs them without putting up enough resistance.

The problem is that the allegation of mind control—as absurd as it may be—will be forgotten in three days. It will be replaced by a new allegation, one that’s bolder, more absurd, and more impervious to reason. And the cycle will begin again.

What Remains When the Cameras Go Off

When the lights go out at the press briefing, when the reporters pack away their recorders, when the podium is empty—a trace remains. Not in the official archives, which will be rewritten. Not in the collective memory, which is short. But in the very fabric of democratic trust, which crumbles a little more each day, lie after lie, briefing after briefing.

“Yet another shameless lie.” Yes. Yet another. And tomorrow, there will be another. The question is no longer whether the spokesperson is lying. The question is how many lies a democracy can absorb before it ceases to be one.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost