Karoline Leavitt got thrown under the bus by the “very special guest” at her own White House press briefing.
President Donald Trump joined his press secretary for a lengthy briefing to mark his first year back in office.
“A very special guest will be joining me at the podium today,” Leavitt, 28, teased on X just before Trump took over the White House Press Briefing Room. “TUNE IN!”
The 79-year-old president took the stage brandishing a thick booklet titled “Accomplishments,” which he leafed through as he once again touted how the U.S. became “the hottest country in the world” thanks to his policies.
But Trump thinks his message on the supposed success of the economy isn’t getting across—and mused that his own team might be to blame.
“We’ve had the best stock market in history, the best 401Ks in history. And we inherited a mess. The numbers that we inherited were way up. And now we brought them, almost all of them, way down,” he insisted. “I mean, I’m not getting—maybe I have bad public relations people, but we’re not getting it across.”
The White House press team did not immediately return a request for comment.
Trump spent over two hours rattling off a list of his wins, which, according to him, included slashing drug prices “by as much as 300, 400, 500, and even 600 percent” under deals inked with pharmaceutical giants.
“So something that was costing $1,300 is now costing $87,” he said, appearing to reference an earlier anecdote from a “fat” friend who claimed that Ozempic, the GLP-1 medication sometimes used as a weight loss drug, costs $1,300 in New York but $87 in London.
“The fake news doesn’t want to write about it,” Trump said. “That’s why I do this. I don’t like to do this, to be honest with you, but I do it because I gotta get the word out.”
The stock market plummeted as Trump bragged about his economic policies. The Dow slid 870 points, the S&P 500 saw its worst day since October, and the Nasdaq shed 561 points as the market reacted to Trump’s renewed threats to take over Greenland and impose sweeping tariffs on European countries that get in his way.
At the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland, world leaders took a defiant stance against the American president, who spent the overnight hours in the U.S. going on a bizarre Truth Social posting spree. At one point, Trump posted a private text exchange with French President Emmanuel Macron, who opposed his plans for Greenland.
“Let’s not be divided, let’s not accept the global order which will be decided by those who claim to have the bigger voice, or the bigger teeth, or the bigger... I don’t know,” Macron said at the World Economic Forum. “Let’s be coordinated. Let’s not waste time with crazy ideas.”
