In yet another sign that we are living in an Orwellian hellscape, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday told Americans not to believe their own ears when they heard President Donald Trump confuse Greenland and Iceland multiple times during his rambling speech in Davos, Switzerland.
Leavitt made the ridiculous claim in a post on X, in which she angrily responded to NewsNation reporter Libbey Dean, who pointed out that Trump "appeared to mix up Greenland and Iceland around three times."
"No he didn’t, Libby," Leavitt replied, misspelling the reporter's name in the process. "His written remarks referred to Greenland as a 'piece of ice' because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here."
Let's roll the tape, shall we?
During his speech, Trump blamed a recent stock market drop on “Iceland,” saying, "They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money."
He again made the flub when talking about our NATO allies’ distaste for his threats of annexing Greenland, saying, "Until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy."
And while Trump did refer to Greenland as a "piece of ice," that is likely what caused the 79-year-old to mix up the name of the territory he wants to conquer.
“It must genuinely suck to be Trump's flak and feel obligated to lie about the dumbest shit all the time. Just yesterday, Trump went to the press briefing room and complained that Leavitt her team suck at their jobs. Now she has to deny reality,” Tommy Vietor, a former aide in Barack Obama’s White House, wrote in a post on X.
Of course, we won’t shed a single tear for Trump’s propaganda princess.
But the most likely explanation for why she is debasing herself is that Leavitt's audience is not the American public but Trump himself, who is obsessed with optics and with looking like the strongman he aspires to be. Her gaslighting was almost certainly an attempt to appease her Dear Leader, whose ego cannot handle being the laughingstock of the world.
It's hard to believe that anyone would believe Leavitt's lies otherwise.
But as famed author George Orwell wrote, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
