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It was around 3 p.m. last Tuesday when I’d finally heard enough. Karoline Leavitt, for the love of your movement, stop bringing podcasters and influencers into the White House briefings. It’s not good for anyone, not the administration, not for conservative nor new media, and it’s certainly not good for all the righteous goals that got Trump elected in the first place.
Take TikTok’s Link Lauren, aka “MAGA Malfoy,” who had the opportunity so few get to ask Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt a question in person at the White House.
Here’s how it went:
One thing I’ve noticed in the first 100 days is that the White House is crawling with kids, you have a young beautiful baby boy, there are babies everywhere, there are so many young folks on staff with kids, but the last four years under Joe Biden, parents are really stressed and ravaged, they had to take on two or three extra jobs, depression rates were up, suicide rates were up, you’re a very high-profile young mother who seems to juggle and balance it all beautifully, what advice do you have for…
Good God, man, that took a full minute. To ask for advice? Call your mom. Are you so incurious about the administration you can’t come up with something better than asking the poor woman for life advice?
I fired off a tweet about the exchange. Instantly I was awash with texts, DMs and calls from other conservatives, some in media, some in actual politics, some even in the heart of MAGA Inc. – all of them saying they found the whole exercise increasingly bile-inducing.
It doesn’t get much better. Another “new media” reporter from LindellTV said Trump looked “healthier than ever before,” and asked if the White House would be releasing his “fitness plan” and if he had spent any time “working” out with RFK.
Not enough? Here’s a handful of other Briefing Room glazings:
It’s so refreshing to have a press secretary after the last few years who is both intelligent and articulate…
You’ve become widely popular with America First patriots…
You look great. You’re doing a great job. You talked about transparency and some of us in this room know how just transparent President Trump has been the last five or six years. I think you’ll do the same. My question is…
Stop. Go take cold showers, all of you.
Then there are the wind-ups. I’ve been watching White House press briefings closely for more than a decade – and I’ve never encountered exposition so full of itself.
A podcaster I personally like took his opportunity in the new media seat to bleurgh this at Karoline:
Many of the news organizations that are represented in this room have marched in lockstep on false narratives, such as the very fine people hoax, the Covington smear, and now what is being called the “Maryland man” hoax, where an MS-13 gang member adjudicated by two different judges I believe, is just simply being referred to as a “Maryland man” over and over again, now in an effort from the White House to expand access to new companies, you’ve created this new media seat, so I’m wondering if you can comment on, uh, following this expansion you’ve had numerous outlets disparage the companies you’ve had sit here as well as the reporters, I’m wondering if you can comment on the unprofessional behavior as well as if you have plans to expand access to new companies?
My brother in Christ, you are literally the answer to your own question. You’re sitting in that seat right now. You are the result of expanded access. You spent your opportunity reading verses from the oft-cited Book of Media Fugazis, then asking the teacher to publicly admonish other students in class for being mean to you. How emasculating.
As much as some part of me is amused that all the highest paid twerps in legacy media had to endure that, I had to endure it too.
Then take X personality and lightspeed purveyor of nonsense Dom Lucre, who took a winding route along “election integrity” lane to get to this question.
“Is there any possibility for names like Barack Hussein Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton to ever possibly get investigated for any of these questions from the American people?”
Instead of discussing today, we’re going back 10 years to the era of “lock her up?” It’s not enough for Clinton to have been the proverbial Eighties-movie monster of politics for decades – never dying, always returning, finally vanquished and now we’re actively reanimating her corpse?
That’s not even the worst part though, the very next question carries the one set up phrase that truly got me torqued.
“To follow up on Dom’s question… ”
Had I heard the telltale jangle of No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh spooling up his compressed air tank behind me right then, it would have been a welcomed and blissful reprieve.
I want to be clear: after the Biden years, in which we all watched the man’s frontal lobes liquifying in real time, the bar could not possibly be lower.
The fact that members of the “new media” are failing to clear such a comically low bar should be telling. It reflects poorly on the administration, but it also reflects poorly on us.
Look where Trump went for his 100-day interviews. TIME magazine for print and ABC News, with whom he just settled a lawsuit, for broadcast. That’s what he actually thinks of us, of new media and our quality, as you lather up for your two-minute spiel in front of Karoline. And who could blame him?
Compliments don’t go viral. Glazings don’t draw eyeballs. Conflict does. If Trump knows anything, it’s what draws the best ratings. This ain’t it.
It should not be lost on us that the greatest communicators in the conservative movement right now spent most of their time in hostile territory. Challenges make the mind sharper. They make the message stronger.
Most importantly, had Biden and the Democrats been challenged more routinely, they might have averted the disaster that happened in 2024.The whole left-wing worldview pickled itself in a stew of largely compliant and supportive media.
We can’t be the same. We can’t let Trump’s White House be the same. What we should be doing with what little time and opportunity is available is holding Trump to account from the right. Especially considering how easily ’28 could pass and we could go right back to the same ten outlets all asking the same ten questions. We should be making sure he sticks to the words that got him elected by the same cohort that routinely consumes our media.
There are some things that are good. Refusing to let the AP start and stop every presser. Inviting new voices. Hell, I can more than get behind reshuffling the entire seating chart.
But if you actually care about the state of our media today, some gatekeeping is in order. No more influencers. Just go on their podcasts. Go into their territory. And let the Dom Lucres of the world tweet themselves into La-La land. They’re no help to us sitting in a press conference – and no help to you either.
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