Let’s begin where Karoline Leavitt began: with God. Specifically, with a solemn prayer, shared between her and her staff members just offstage before she started today’s Iran war-heavy press briefing by boasting about killing people who lie to Donald Trump.
“Could you hear our amen in there?” she asked White House reporters, as she walked out, which is not a question you usually expect from a government spokesperson in a constitutional democracy, but anyway. The Lord has entered the briefing room. He is, one gathers, extremely supportive of Operation Epic Fury. It’s a name surely picked out from the Bible.
Yes, the regular briefings on the war that’s always been a war but also isn’t a war and has already been won but also is currently being negotiated get weirder by the week. Leavitt is sent out to repeatedly remind people that “the regime chanted ‘Death to America’” — as if that actually means anything of substance — and that “the president always said” the campaign would be over in “four to six weeks.” In response to a question about Iran war timelines today, 30 days since Israel and the United States started bombing Iran, she repeated the “four to six weeks” line and then told the reporter, triumphantly: “You do the math.”
To which one might reasonably reply: I did, and the bottom end of the timeline has expired. But fuzzy, subjective things like space and time have no place in this, God’s briefing room. What of the threat, asked another reporter, made by Donald Trump a few hours earlier on Truth Social, that he would destroy Iran entirely — including wiping out desalination plants for delivering clean water to the civilian population — if they didn’t agree to all his demands at the negotiating table? Is wiping out civilian access to clean water not a war crime? Isn’t it very, very illegal?
Iran’s “best move is to make a deal” because the US “has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination,” Leavitt responded. She then talked around legality in a way that seemed to suggest either Trump’s threats are hollow or anything Trump chooses to do is, de facto, not illegal. When a clarifying follow-up question was asked, she refused to answer.
What were we left with in terms of solid information about the next steps in Iran? Surprise, surprise: the president isn’t “ruling out” ground troops. Iranian military leaders will get “military consequences” if they don’t “hold true to their words.”
There are a lot of people, Leavitt said, with fixed eyes and a half-smile, who are “no longer on Planet Earth because they lied to the United States and they strung us along.” She seemed to like the phrasing, because she repeated it another couple of times later in the briefing for effect.
What about the economic turbulence caused by skyrocketing oil prices after the closing of the Strait of Hormuz? “Short-term fluctuations for long-term benefit.” The military objectives in Iran? “The mission will continue until the objectives are achieved.” The objectives themselves? Not specified. They wouldn’t tell the media anyway, because then their enemies would know what they were planning — although one does suppose that with a leader this erratic, letting everyone in on the plan on Monday wouldn’t guarantee any Iranian military getting worthwhile information by Tuesday afternoon.
There was a brief interlude during which Leavitt claimed that TSA agents weren’t getting paid because Democrats “want millions and millions of illegal immigrants” to pour across the border, preferably “murderers and rapists and thugs” if they can get them (I think this part was in Leviticus?)
Another strange aside was when she held up a piece of A4 paper showing how many minutes three news programs had spent reporting on the shooting of a young woman in Illinois during the evening news, supposedly proof of the “mainstream” networks’ love of murderous immigrants because the man charged with shooting her is of Venezuelan descent (his immigration status remains unclear.)
Inconveniently, just as she was about to wrap things up, Leavitt was asked what she thought of Pope Leo XIV’s statement during his first Palm Sunday mass, that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war” (no, not even Pete Hegseth’s.) Leavitt replied that America had been a nation for 250 whole years and that service members like it when Americans pray for them. It was a strangely atheist answer for a supposedly devout Christian: Who even cares if no one’s actually listening? It makes them feel better while they bomb people!
On a question about whether American-made landmines have actually been found in the Middle East, Leavitt then demurred. But she did mention that if he gets the chance, Trump will hold a big Easter dinner at the White House on the weekend if Congress comes back and strikes a deal to fund DHS and ICE. And isn’t that what matters?
Just like that, the briefing was over. The old lines had been resurrected; the Democrats were evil-doers; the epic fury surges on. Leavitt’s large, gold cross glinted on a necklace round her neck as she strode back offstage to meet with her devoted followers.
Jesus may or may not have had notes.
