Karoline Leavitt Crashes When Asked if Trump Is Abusing His Power

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt could barely cobble together an answer Tuesday when asked to explain how Donald Trump’s executive order targeting specific individuals wasn’t an abuse of power.

Last week, Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs, his former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who was fired in November 2020 for publicly contradicting the president’s false claims of “massive voter fraud” in the presidential election that year.

Leavitt was clearly caught off guard during a press briefing when The New York Times’ White House correspondent Jonathan Swan asked about the hypocrisy of Trump’s order targeting Krebs.

“The president has long said that it would be an abuse of power for a president to direct prosecutors to investigate him. Last week, President Trump explicitly directed the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs to see if it can find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” asked Swan. “How is that not an abuse of power, to direct the Justice Department to look into an individual—a named individual?”

“Look, the president signed that executive order. It’s the position of the president in this White House that it’s well within his authority to do it, otherwise he wouldn’t have signed it. And he signed it, and that’s his policy,” Leavitt said.

According to Leavitt’s logic, Trump’s order to investigate Krebs was not an “abuse of power” for the simple fact that Trump was the one doing it. It doesn’t get more authoritarian than that.

Trump had previously railed against former President Joe Biden after Trump became the subject of multiple federal lawsuits and was indicted for allegedly mishandling classified documents and alleged election interference. Both cases have now been dismissed. Trump also claimed that Biden was “virtually leading” Trump’s hush-money case in New York, in which he was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Donald Trump is scrambling to reassure farmers they’ll be protected from his volatile trade war with China.

“Our farmers are GREAT, but because of their GREATNESS, they are always put on the Front Line with our adversaries, such as China, whenever there is a Trade negotiation or, in this case, a Trade War,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday. “The same thing happened in my First Term,” he added, pointing to the $28 billion he spent bailing out farmers from his first trade war with China.

“I rewarded our farmers with a payment of $28 Billion Dollars, all through the China deal. It was a great transaction for the USA, until Crooked Joe Biden came in and didn’t enforce it.” In a press conference Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the Trump administration is considering a tariff bailout this time around too.

The president is urging farmers to grit their teeth as he tanks the economy with a staggering 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods. China imposed a 125 percent tariff on U.S. goods in retaliation, which will devastate American farm markets designed for export. American soybean farmers still haven’t recovered from losing one of their biggest markets in China during Trump’s first term.

For cattle ranchers, the tariffs will likely result in the loss of one of their biggest customers—they sold $1.6 billion worth of beef to China last year.

For decades, American farmers have been incentivized to grow commodity crops like soybeans, corn, wheat, and rice for export rather than for domestic production. It’s led to an incredibly monopolized food system, with only the largest farms able to compete. The tariffs will only make that monopoly worse. Input costs will go up, and small and midsize farms will be shut out of export markets.

“More than 20% of farm income comes from exports, and farmers rely on imports for crucial supplies like fertilizer and specialized tools,” the American Farm Bureau said in a statement earlier this month. “Tariffs will drive up the cost of critical supplies, and retaliatory tariffs will make American-grown products more expensive globally. The combination not only threatens farmers’ competitiveness in the short-term, but it may cause long-term damage by leading to losses in market share.”

The trade war comes as Trump has also made drastic cuts to crucial federal farming programs, a devastating blow to thousands of farmers navigating extreme weather events and unprecedented economic circumstances.

Trump’s words of advice to farmers as he ruins their livelihoods? Just hold on.

“China was brutal to our Farmers, I these Patriots to just hold on, and a great trade deal was made,” he wrote in his typo-ridden message. “The USA will PROTECT OUR FARMERS!!!”

JD Vance can’t stop insisting on the lie that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a dangerous gang member who can’t be returned to the United States from a prison in El Salvador. 

The vice president got into an argument on X with musician and writer Mikel Jollet Tuesday morning over President Trump’s defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the administration return Abrego Garcia. It all started when Vance posted that “the entire American media and left wing industrial complex has decided the most important issue today is that the Trump admin deported an MS-13 gang member (and illegal alien).” 

Jollet responded shortly afterward, correcting Vance. 

“No, the most important issue is that the Supreme Court ruled by a 9-0 decision that you must return him,” Jollet posted. “Trump is not a dictator or a king. He’s a president and a president must follow the Supreme Court’s ruling. If he does not, he must be removed from power. It’s that simple.”

Vance then doubled down, saying the U.S. is powerless to retrieve a “terrorist” from El Salvador, using a similar argument to what Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said Monday and echoing the rest of the Trump administration’s quibbling over semantics.  

“Are you proposing that we invade El Salvador to retrieve a gang member with no legal right to be in our country?” Vance responded. “Where in the Supreme Court’s decision does it require us to do that?”

Jollet’s reply left the vice president silent. 

“No, the ruling states clearly that you are required to take steps to facilitate his return and update the court on your progress. You have plenty of tools at your disposal (diplomatic and otherwise) to do this without invading El Salvador,” the writer posted.

For the record, the Trump administration already admitted that it wrongly deported Abrego Garcia in court, yet Vance insists on pushing the lie that the building trades worker is in fact a violent gang member. 

In fact, Vance and Trump are doubling down on purpose because they don’t want any deportation to be overturned, nor do they want to give a win to their opponents. They want immigrants in the U.S. to continue to live in fear and cement their absolute power, even if it means destroying the Constitution’s separation of powers and becoming a dictatorship.

Donald Trump’s administration is planning to shutter U.S. embassies around the world, continuing to dilute American soft power in its latest effort to shrink the federal workforce.

A memorandum that was part of a broader budget for 2026 that is due to the Office of Budget Management Tuesday outlined a plan to close 10 embassies and 17 consulates, according to Punchbowl News. This includes U.S. missions in Eritrea, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Scotland, and South Sudan, as well as five outposts in France and two in Germany.

In Canada, U.S. consulates in Halifax and Montreal would be significantly downsized, according to the document. The consolidation of U.S. embassies in Canada comes as relations have rapidly deteriorated after Trump announced steep tariffs on aluminum, steel, cars, and autoparts.

The memo stated that the targets for downsizing “were evaluated based on feedback from regional bureaus and the interagency, consular workload, cost per [U.S. direct hire] billet, condition of facilities, and security ratings.”

The State Department is also planning to “reduce or eliminate” its footprint in Mogadishu, Somalia, due to a “non-permissive environment,” according to the memo. Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social Monday that the U.S. would continue to “support the Somali People” against the Houthis attempting to “embed” there. The American mission in Mogadishu is the only U.S. outpost in the country.

State Department officials also pitched closing the America’s Diplomatic Support Center in Baghdad because it was “by far” the most expensive.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has yet to sign off on the reductions, but the recommendations were reportedly made by José Cunningham, who has served as the undersecretary for management at the State Department since April 5.

Last month, Politico reported that the Trump administration was planning to cut the State Department’s budget by nearly half, zeroing out the funding for programs to promote democratic processes and counter drug trafficking, and shuttering up to three dozen embassies. This proposal would shrink the department’s budget from $54.4 billion in 2025 to $28.4 billion in 2026.

The New York Times had previously reported that senior State Department officials had drawn up plans to close a dozen consulates overseas as soon as the summer, and were considering wider shutdowns. Roughly 700 State Department employees, including 450 career diplomats, resigned just within Trump’s first two months in office.

Trump is increasing his threats against Harvard University after the school refused to set up an admissions council to bring in MAGA personnel.

After Harvard announced Monday it would not comply with the Trump administration’s absurd demands in exchange for $9 billion in federal funding, the White House cut $2.2 billion in grants to the school along with a $60 million contract. As if that wasn’t enough, Trump then threatened to revoke the school’s tax exempt status the following day.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Tuesday. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Trump’s war on Harvard comes after an April 11 letter to the school from the General Services Administration and the Department of Education, listing a series of outrageous demands. It states Harvard should dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, limit student protests, and reduce the admission of international students “to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values”—all on-par with what Trump has demanded from other institutions.

But buried deeper in the text of the three-page letter are even more fantastical demands that would give the White House complete control over the university’s operations and student body.

“Harvard must abolish all criteria, preferences, and practices, whether mandatory or optional, throughout its admissions and hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests,” the section on “Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring” reads.

“Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.” In other words, bring in a new crop of far-right students and faculty to take over every department.

The letter also stated Harvard must “make organizational changes to ensure full transparency and cooperation with all federal regulators,” and submit an annual report detailing its compliance with the federal government. America’s oldest post-secondary institution would essentially become a state-run university.

Harvard is the first Ivy League university to stand up to Trump in his egregious assault on academic freedom after a number of other schools crumbled at his knees amidst mass funding cuts.

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” Harvard University President Alan M. Garber said in a statement. “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

“Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community,” another letter to the Trump administration from Harvard’s lawyers reads. “But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”