Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at jeffdanziger.com.
The political news cycle becomes glacial and petty in August, and I am here for it.
Why? Because, with the exception of this week’s primaries (farewell for now, Francesca Hong!), which continue to fuel pointless debates about what the Democratic Party should be and to whom, there is not even a gridlocked Congress to write about. Congress has gone home on its annual five-week August recess, mandated by federal law in 1970 because, according to one source, “there were many younger lawmakers with children coming into Congress who wanted a more predictable legislative schedule and designated vacation times.” Everyone will be back by mid-September—well, maybe not Mitch McConnell, but everyone else.
But it’s always big news when the President’s press secretary leaves, right? In the Department of “You Can’t Have It All, Even If God Loves You,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is leaving her job lying to, and terrorizing, the White House press corps. Is this a surprise?
Yes and no.
Admittedly, the timing is weird: Leavitt had just returned from maternity leave, and you would think that after spending nine weeks as a mother of two she would have not done that unless she thought she had the support at home to hack it. And I am quite sure that Trump leaving her on the decoy plane in Ankara to be shot down by Iranian missiles did not put the thought in her head. Or it may have been the final straw. After everything she had done for him, Trump left Leavitt behind to die but let Natalie Harp live.
At 26, Leavitt was the youngest PressSec in history, and if anyone had the stamina to simultaneously mother two children under two and Donald Trump, it was her. In 2024, she returned to her job with the Trump campaign one week after giving birth to her son in July, and this time she took six weeks off. Clearly this was a sign she was slowing down, but we can all agree that even with paid help, caring for two children under 25-months, one of whom is an infant, is hard to do well when you have a globe-trotting, seven day a week 16-hour a day job—and your boss calls you incessantly.
Citing a report in the Daily Mail, Edith Olmsted at The New Republic writes that Leavitt has been trying to get out for some time:
Two sources told the Mail that Leavitt’s decision, announced Wednesday, had been months in the making. “She was just trying to figure out how to politely step down with [Trump’s] blessing,” one of the sources said.
Another source told the Mail that Leavitt realized she needed to leave after returning from maternity leave. “First week back she realized she wasn’t feeling it anymore,” the source said.
Yet another source told Mail that Leavitt had been experiencing severe “burnout” from her job.
Arguably, that baby was Leavitt’s ticket out. Maybe that was Usha Vance’s strategy too: The more you can make an argument for staying home, the less implicated in fascism and corruption you are.Who’s waiting in the wings to take Leavitt’s place?
Rumor has it that CNN’s conservative commentator Scott Jennings is a top candidate. Martin Holmes of TV Insider cites a New York Post story that also puts these folks in the mix: Alina Habba, a former Trump attorney who now has a weird job called “Senior Advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys;” deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, who is actually qualified for the job and so, probably won’t get it; Taylor Budowich, who used to work for Ohio Republican Congressman Max Miller, currently in the news for alleged family violence; and Breitbart Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle, who is probably also qualified, but physically unattractive, usually a no-go zone for Trump. Katie Miller, Kari Lake, and Steven Cheung have also been mentioned.
Of all of these, Anna Kelly would be the right pick; Kari Lake would be hilarious; and Alina Habba will probably get it.
It will also be interesting to see Leavitt’s next move, and how quickly she makes it. She clearly loves to work, and the jury is out about whether she loves being a full time mother. Leavitt is not even 30 yet, and she has played her cards well, up to and including marrying a rich older man who can support her ambitions as a working mother with plenty of staff. My guess is that after a decent interval, she will pivot to becoming either a highly paid right-wing pundit at Fox News or David Ellison’s new look CNN.
Claire Potter is a political historian who taught at the New School for Social Research. She is a contributing editor to Public Seminar and wrote the popular blog Tenured Radical from 2006 through 2015. Please consider subscribing to Political Junkie, her Substack newsletter.
Reprinted with permission from Political Junkie.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a whirlwind press briefing on Tuesday, where she lied and deflected when asked about President Donald Trump’s unpopular Iran war.
When asked about a Reuters report that around 150 U.S. troops have been wounded since the start of the war, Leavitt refused to confirm the number, saying that “it's within that ballpark.”
Similarly, when pressed on Trump’s dubious motivations for launching the war, Leavitt suggested that it’s merely vibes-based.
“This was a feeling the president had based on facts,” she said. “Facts provided to him by his top negotiators who had been engaged with the Iranian regime in a good faith effort.”
And she was even less receptive to questions about the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, that reportedly killed 168 children. When asked about the administration’s so-called investigation into the potential war crime, Leavitt snapped.
“We’re not gonna be harassed by The New York Times,” she retorted.
"We're not gonna be harassed by the New York Times who have put out a lot of articles on this" -- Leavitt sneers at the New York Times for reporting on what by all accounts seems to have been a US strike that killed scores of elementary school students in Iran
[image or embed]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 10, 2026 at 3:27 PM
Then when asked about Trump’s decision to bail out his buddy President Vladimir Putin by easing sanctions on Russian oil, Leavitt dismissed it as no big deal.
“Russian oil was already at sea,” Leavitt said. “So this short term measure—we don't believe it will provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government at this time.”
According to The New York Times, the decision to lift sanctions—as oil prices skyrocket—comes in the nick of time for Moscow.
The only positive is Leavitt didn’t blame former President Joe Biden for Trump’s war.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
The White House was forced to fire back after a prominent conservative influencer and podcaster criticized President Donald Trump‘s various and rapidly-shifting reasons for attacking Iran in a massive and ongoing military exercise that the president and defense chief have called “war.”
Matt Walsh, who hosts his right-wing podcast on The Daily Wire and has four million followers on X, on Monday expressed his confusion with the administration’s talking points.
“So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war,” he began. “And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask. And although we are not fighting this war to free the Iranian people, they are now free, or might be, depending on who seizes power, and we have no idea who that will be.”
“The messaging on this thing is,” he said, “to put it mildly, confused.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Walsh just hours later, saying that Trump on Saturday had “released a statement laying out clear objectives to the American people for Operation Epic Fury.”
According to Leavitt, they include destroying Iran’s missiles and Navy, ensuring Iran’s proxies cannot destabilize the region or the world, stopping them from making and using IEDs, guaranteeing Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and preventing the Iranian regime from threatening America.
“Simply put,” she wrote, “the terrorist Iranian regime would not say yes to peace.”
“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has actively and intentionally facilitated the killing of Americans while chanting ‘death to America’ and funding other bloodthirsty terrorists seeking to destroy the United States and all of Western Civilization. Prior American leaders were too weak and cowardly to do anything about it. Now, President Donald J. Trump is correcting decades of cowardice and holding those responsible for the deaths of Americans accountable.”
But Politico’s White House bureau chief Dasha Burns noted that Walsh “is among many right wing voices questioning the administration’s actions in Iran.”
“I have heard repeated warnings from Republican sources that the WH needs to do more to get MAGA on side,” she added.
Sean Davis, co-founder of the right-wing website The Federalist, reposted Walsh’s remarks and shared similar ones of his own.
“Is the goal to eliminate the Iranian regime or free the Iranian people or degrade their nuclear capability or degrade the conventional weapons capability or eliminate their regional hegemony or to cut off their oil supply to China or to help Israel or what?” Davis asked. “The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective.”
Former Trump ally and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who months ago broke with Trump, wrote: “And just like that we are no longer a nation divided by left and right, we are now a nation divided be those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance.”
Reprinted with permission from Alternet
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