As Donald Trump’s first foreign trip of his second term got underway, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt turned to social media to highlight a week’s worth of “historic results.” Her list, however, was badly flawed.
For example, Leavitt claimed the president “reached a trade deal” with United Kingdom, which wasn’t entirely true. She said the president “negotiated a trade deal” with China, which also wasn’t true. She said the president signed a “historic” executive order “to slash drug prices,” which wasn’t even close to being true.
But Leavitt also credited Trump with “securing a ceasefire” between India and Pakistan, and this too warranted some fact-checking.
As recently as Thursday, JD Vance appeared on Fox News, and while he expressed concern about the intensifying conflict between India and Pakistan, the vice president added that the violent escalation between the two countries was “fundamentally none of our business.”
It was a difficult position to take seriously — when two nuclear-armed countries are launching attacks on one another, potentially destabilizing the region, the conflict is absolutely the business of global leaders — and Vance’s rhetoric soon looked even worse when Trump declared two days later that his administration had negotiated “a full and immediate ceasefire.”
But that proved problematic in part because, a day later, there was evidence the ceasefire was not holding, and also because India’s foreign minister downplayed the United States’ role in the negotiations.








