By Katherine Tinsley
8:53am PDT, Jul 3, 2025
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Karoline Leavitt rushed to
Donald Trump's defense on Monday, June 30, while making an appearance on
Fox & Friends. However, the press secretary was caught in a lie while trying to protect her boss.
Keep reading for the details…
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Karoline Leavitt defended Donald Trump's approach to the targeted airstrikes in Iran — a decision he made without Congress' approval.
"I know the president is very decisive but he also likes listening to all angles," said TV star Brian Kilmeade. "And he's used to Democrats fighting against him. How hard — how much harder was the decision when you have people like Steve Bannon coming over for lunch saying, 'don't do it,' Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, 'don't do it' and other voices like that — how did the president digest all that knowing these people weren't necessarily against him, they are against the pending action he was more than likely going to take?"
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Karoline Leavitt praised Donald Trump's listening skills despite the president deciding to conduct targeted airstrikes without consulting Congress.
"One of the great things that makes President Trump a great leader is his ability to listen to people with different perspectives, but then ultimately make a decision based on his own instinct and the intelligence that he saw," Leavitt shared.
"And he saw, based on U.S. intelligence, that Iran is just weeks from obtaining a nuclear weapon and President Trump has been saying his entire life, not just as presidential candidate or as President of the United States twice, but also as a private citizen that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon," she continued.
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Despite Donald Trump's targeted airstrike, Karoline Leavitt painted her boss as a good leader.
"And nobody knows what it means to accomplish peace through strength better than President Trump," the press secretary shared. "He is the one who came up with that motto and that foreign policy doctrine, and he successfully implemented it in his first term."
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Karoline Leavitt credited Donald Trump for coining the "peace through strength" slogan, but the term was previously used in the 1980s.
The phrase was noticeable in Ronald Reagan's campaign against Jimmy Carter and was a core principle of the president's approach to foreign relations.
"To be prepared for war, is one of the most effective means of preserving peace," Reagan said in a 1986 speech, and "peace through strength" was the official motto for the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan nuclear aircraft carrier.
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Despite Karoline Leavitt's false claim of Donald Trump creating the "peace through strength" motto, she continued to stress that the president is committed to ending the war in the Middle East.
"And this is one many of steps he is taking to successfully implement peace in his second term," Karoline Leavitt explained. "The president wants to see a peaceful and prosperous Middle East. He talked about that extensively, when we took that historic trip to Saudi Arabia, and he talked about how Iranian terrorist regime was bringing down the rest of the region, and our Gulf partners and allies agree with that sentiment."
"So, the president wants peace. Sometimes you have to use strength to achieve it and he's not achieve to use strength," she added. "And as Saturday night proved, the United States has best and most lethal fighting force in the history of the world and we can use it if we must."
