Even The Lord Took A Pass

Where does a useful lying idiot go after being shunned by Big Daddy?

We thought we had it bad when Sarah Huckabee Sanders flirted with the Liars’ Hall of Fame during Trump’s first term. Sanders stunned the planet with her deadpan wrestling matches against facts, truth, and observable reality. She carried that shifty-eyed look of a street pickpocket stealing for the Lord—a Bible tucked beneath one arm, your wallet disappearing beneath the other.

Then came crucifix-wearing Karoline Leavitt.

Leavitt operated on a level of menace rarely seen outside a corner tavern at closing time or the dimly lit lobby of an airport hotel. She looked capable of leading a squad of kidney thieves through the service entrance without disturbing the guests. Devious and devoted. Young enough to be mistaken for an intern, ruthless enough to fire the entire building.

Biden gave us Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre—competent, prepared, gold-standard White House press secretaries who understood that the job required something more than sneering at reporters and reading insults from a binder.

Trump gave us the often-spoofed Sean Spicer, pop-tart Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the nearly forgettable Stephanie Grisham, whose greatest contribution to the profession was demonstrating that a White House press secretary could collect a salary without holding a White House press briefing.

The job itself is supposed to be a shield for the presidency. It requires discipline, endurance, and the ability to step into a room filled with people paid to question every syllable leaving your mouth. Rare are the souls who cherish the thought of bantering with the White House press corps while defending policies they did not write, decisions they did not make, and disasters they were not permitted to acknowledge.

Trump fixed that problem by changing the room.

He stuffed the seats with right-wing podcasters, FOX News toads, internet hecklers, MAGA mascots, and assorted microphone owners delighted simply to be invited indoors. Slippery critters. The kind who arrives with a question, a grievance, a discount code, and a desperate hope that Trump might someday remember their names.

You knew the jig was up when Leavitt became a mother and returned carrying the ordinary evidence of motherhood. Trump likes his female hires to resemble teenage models at a community beauty pageant: blond, polished, ornamental, and permanently posed beside something carrying his name. Motherhood introduces reality into the picture. Reality has never been welcomed in Trump’s showroom.

Meanwhile, his wandering attention appeared to settle on 35-year-old human printer Natalie Harp—far more committed, far more soldier-like, and apparently constructed without an off switch. The woman marches to the tune of Trump’s snoring farts. Always nearby. Always attentive. Dressed as though she remains trapped on the set of The Apprentice, waiting for the cameras to roll and the bankrupt casino to reopen.

If only Joan Rivers were still with us.

None of these window mannequins would survive the biting lash of her blistering tongue. Rivers could puncture an ego from across a ballroom. She would have taken one look at this parade of lacquered loyalty and left the whole administration smoking in the alley behind the Kennedy Center.

Which brings me to this: Where does Leavitt go from here?

FOX News?

One of the fringe right-wing outlets where every anchor looks like a regional sales manager furious about oat milk?

Perhaps she launches a podcast. Everyone launches a podcast once the building pass stops working. The microphone arrives. The home studio is assembled. A flag appears in the background. The host leans toward the camera and promises to tell truths the mainstream media does not want you to hear.

But what audience would Leavitt bring with her?

Nothing from her time at the podium—attacking, stonewalling, scolding, deflecting—provides the foundation for a lasting audience. There was no charm beneath the hostility. No humour beneath the contempt. No hidden intelligence waiting for room to breathe. The performance was the product, and the product depended entirely upon proximity to Trump.

Remove Trump, the White House emblem, and the captive press corps, and what remains?

A young woman talking angrily into a microphone.

There is no shortage of those.

I see little but sadness and decline in her future. Twenty-eight years old. Publicly untrustworthy. Willing to lie for praise, access, or a useless cause. Dipped in cruelty and polished for television. Produced by a political organization that treats loyalty as a disposable resource, then loaded onto a figurative airplane with a one-way ticket the moment her usefulness expires.

The organization has no use for her except to send her far away and keep her available for the occasional reunion tour. She may receive a contributor contract, a speaking slot at a half-empty convention, or a place on a panel discussing media bias beside three men selling survival food. Perhaps there will be a book. There is always a book. Two hundred pages of grievance, devotion, and photographs proving she once stood near power.

The public will not sympathize. It will not cry on her behalf. She spent her moment in the national light mocking the very idea that truth carried any obligation. When the light moves on, she cannot complain about the darkness.

What remains is a life of shame, ridicule, and diminishing invitations—the slow realization that being useful to Trump is not the same as being valued by him.

Which brings us to whoever is next.

Scott Jennings or Kari Lake?

Trump reportedly cannot stand Kari Lake, yet she represents a genuine step upward in the evil department. Lake has the polished madness of someone who has been arguing with a hotel mirror for three consecutive nights. She understands television. She understands spectacle. Most importantly, she understands that the modern Republican Party does not require belief. It requires performance.

Scott Jennings has that Lindsey Graham quality about him. Polished enough to be the laugh guy around friends, obedient enough to abandon his dignity before dessert. He would lie for a buck and a quarter if the transaction came with attention and a camera angle. There is always something faintly eager about him, as though he has spent his entire adult life waiting for the cruellest person in the room to wave him over.

Jennings could stand at the podium and pretend the building was not on fire. Lake could stand there and accuse the flames of belonging to the Democratic Party.

Either would understand the assignment.

Neither would improve the institution.

Whoever takes that podium will become another disgrace in a job already dragged through the mud, hosed off, and dragged through it again. The purpose will not be to inform the public, defend policy, or explain the actions of the president. The purpose will be domination. Humiliation. Noise. Another daily ceremony in which facts are marched into the room, stripped of their dignity, and thrown beneath the wheels of the presidential limousine.

Kari Lake?

I have to think about that one. This could be mad fun.

She may be too ambitious, too theatrical, and too convinced that the spotlight belongs to her. Trump does not hire stars. He hires moons—people willing to glow only because they orbit him.

And when the orbit decays, they fall alone.