Earlier this week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that China had refused to purchase American soybeans during Joe Biden’s presidency because Chinese leaders “had no respect for our president, Biden, or for the country at the time.” Thankfully, she added, Donald Trump has turned things around.
As White House lies go, this one was odd — and rather lazy. It didn’t take a lot of Googling to learn that Chinese purchases of American soybeans during the Biden era were quite robust. Beijing stopped buying the products, however, earlier this year in response to Trump’s trade tariffs.
It was a timely reminder that, in service of the president’s political agenda, Leavitt isn’t just willing to spin and exaggerate, she’s also willing to turn reality on its head.
This was apparent again during a briefing on Thursday when Donald Trump’s chief spokesperson declared, in apparent seriousness, “Every data point and every economic metric does, in fact, show that the economy is improving.”
That was demonstrably ridiculous. Americans are confronting rising consumer costs, rising energy costs, a contracting manufacturing sector and the worst job growth since the Great Recession. That’s not a matter of opinion; it’s just what’s happening.
But Leavitt kept going anyway.
When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins dared to remind the White House press secretary that grocery prices have climbed, Leavitt accused her of deliberately pushing “untrue narratives,” despite the fact that grocery prices really have climbed.
As the briefing continued, another reporter noted that the consumer price index was 3% at the start of the year, and it was still at 3% in September, which is the most recent month for which data is available.
“No, it’s 2.5%,” Leavitt replied. This is another detail that’s easy to look up. There’s no reason to take my word for it: The data is publicly available to everyone, including the press secretary, and it shows quite plainly that the CPI spiked in 2022 amid rapid postpandemic economic growth before it improved to 3% toward the very end of Biden’s presidency. While it did dip a little lower in the spring of 2025, according to the most recent available data it’s still at 3%. We don’t yet know whether the index has gotten better or worse since September, but as things stand, the White House’s claims, like too many of Leavitt’s other assertions, are easily debunked. As Americans turn sharply against Trump’s handing of the economy, the president and his team have other options, but they appear determined to keep playing make-believe, hoping the repetition of nonsense will bully reality into submission. Trump’s approval rating suggests Leavitt and her colleagues might need a plan B.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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