Karoline Leavitt is preparing to step down from her position as Donald Trump’s fifth White House press secretary. Her time in the role began with a claim at her first news conference that the Biden administration had planned to use $50m in taxpayer money to send condoms to Gaza. This claim was later contradicted by USAID records.
A review of her tenure and those of her predecessors indicates a pattern of making unsubstantiated claims. Sean Spicer, Trump's first press secretary, asserted that Trump's 2017 inauguration had the largest audience ever, a claim visual evidence showed to be untrue.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Spicer's successor, claimed that FBI agents were pleased with James Comey's firing. She later admitted to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators that this claim was invented. Stephanie Grisham, who served for nine months, admitted in her memoir to lying for Trump. She had previously insisted Trump predicted the 2016 Brexit referendum results before the vote, despite evidence that he arrived in Scotland after the results were known.
Kayleigh McEnany, Trump's fourth press secretary, claimed in June 2020 that the president did not use the term "kung flu" to refer to the coronavirus, two days after he had used it at a rally. Trump used the term again the following day.