# Karoline Leavitt
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Tags:** trump
**Created:** [May 9, 2025, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138 "2025-05-09T06:40:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/1 "2025-05-09T06:40:46Z")
Who was this strumpet before entering the Trump fold?
Can someone enlighten me about who she is, what she was, what the hell is she thinking??
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### Author:  [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/2 "2025-05-09T06:51:36Z")
Fox news intern, ran for congress, local news somewhere. Worked for Trump awhile.
Interned in the Whitehouse.
Incidently youngest person to be a press secretary.
She ain’t much.
Can’t tell what she’s thinking. Barely can tell what she’s sayin’
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### Author:  [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/3 "2025-05-09T07:12:55Z")
Here’s a profile Politico did of her a couple of weeks back:
[The Political Education of Karoline Leavitt - POLITICO](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/25/karoline-leavitt-election-trump-press-secretary-profile-00300552)
> Throughout the 15 months of her congressional campaign, Leavitt’s opponents criticized her youth and inexperience, but missed that it was, in some ways, also a kind of superpower. She came of age politically as Trump was rising to power. No one in the primary could channel MAGA better. She might not have won a seat to the House in the end, but she is now the most prominent figure channeling the president’s views to the public. Better than any slice of the 27-year-old White House press secretary’s still-young career, her 477-day campaign for Congress both explains and foreshadowed her tenure as Trump’s foot soldier in his war on the press.
But, basically another grifter who figured out that they could garner a lot of mileage from hitching their wagon to Trump’s star.
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### Author:  [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/4 "2025-05-09T09:01:53Z")
> [@kambuckta](#):
>
> Who was this strumpet before entering the Trump fold?
She is an incredibly rude person, but can I just suggest we don’t trot out tired mysoginistic slurs just because she’s a young woman you don’t like.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/5 "2025-05-09T12:59:58Z")
Agreed. There are so many great insults to throw her way without saying she has too much sex to be a proper lady.
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### Author:  [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/6 "2025-05-09T15:01:34Z")
Her idol is Baghdad Bob, but she’s also studied the works of Tokyo Rose and Joseph Goebbels.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/7 "2025-05-09T18:24:26Z")
Yup. To be fair, the OP may not even have been thinking of the conventional sexual implications of the term “strumpet” when he applied it to Leavitt. Derogatory terms for women have a tendency to broaden their application beyond the specific acts or behavior that they were originally derogating, and just retain their gendered connotations for extra misogynistic rhetorical punch.
But, intentional or not, you are correct that using sexualized gendered terms isn’t the best way to criticize somebody for characteristics not related to sexual behavior. Leavitt is much more accurately and informatively described by the terms “asshole”, “ignoramus”, “uncivilized”, “unprofessional”, “disgustingly rude and uncivil”, “offensively insulting”, “malevolent”, “dishonest”, and similar content-focused epithets.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/8 "2025-05-09T18:39:25Z")
> [@wguy123](#):
>
> Her idol is Baghdad Bob, but she’s also studied the works of Tokyo Rose and Joseph Goebbels.
Well said! 😃
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### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/9 "2025-05-09T19:00:43Z")
> [@Kimstu](#):
>
> To be fair, the OP may not even have been thinking of the conventional sexual implications of the term “strumpet” when **he** applied it to Leavitt.
She, not he.
While I agree about not using strictly gendered insults, Leavitt has sold whatever integrity she may have once had for filthy lucre. As in prostituting oneself.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/10 "2025-05-09T19:07:30Z")
Apologies to the OP, and thanks. But I maintain that gendered and sexualized insults aren’t needed to get across criticisms of venality, greed and opportunism.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/11 "2025-05-09T19:09:49Z")
> [@Kimstu](#):
>
> I maintain that gendered and sexualized insults aren’t needed to get across criticisms of venality, greed and opportunism.
Agreed that they’re not needed, but it’s not useful to be so hypersensitive about them that we even read them into comments where they were not intended.
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### Author:  [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/12 "2025-05-09T19:11:53Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> Agreed that they’re not needed, but it’s not useful to be so hypersensitive about them that we even read them into comments where they were not intended.
True, but it would be easy to use the universal “asshole” (everyone has one) and avoid any controversy. And asshole is fitting here: She spews shit every time she is in front of a camera.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/13 "2025-05-09T19:24:02Z")
Er, nobody “read into” the OP’s comments the word “strumpet”: it was explicitly used, in so many word.
And I explicitly acknowledged in post #7 that the OP may well not have meant that insult in a specifically sexual sense, so obviously I wasn’t gratuitously “reading” any such sense into it.
The problem with using gendered and sexualized terms like “strumpet” when insulting women in particular isn’t that it may be factually inaccurate if the woman in question isn’t actually a prostitute. The problem with it is that it’s automatically dragging in (however unintentionally) the term’s traditional connotations of condemning and shaming women’s sexual behavior, in order to increase the negative perception of the woman being criticized. Even if in this case the criticism, and the woman’s actions, don’t have anything whatever to do with sexual behavior.
Ask yourself, for example, why somebody might object to a critic calling a greedy negotiator a “shylock” for demanding too many concessions on a trade deal, especially if the negotiator happens to be Jewish, and you’ll see what I mean about dragging in connotations.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/14 "2025-05-09T19:37:37Z")
> [@Kimstu](#):
>
> Er, nobody “read into” the OP’s comments the word “strumpet”: it was explicitly used, in so many word.
>
> And I explicitly acknowledged in post #7 that the OP may well not have meant that insult in a specifically sexual sense, so obviously I wasn’t gratuitously “reading” any such sense into it.
Calm down. I just made an innocent comment suggesting that sometimes our hyper-sensitivities can be over the top. This is exactly why the term “woke” has developed negative connotations that are now being exploited by the right.
When someone says “who is this strumpet?” it’s obviously not meant to be taken literally, but is obviously meant to be humourous. Reacting to it with stern-faced denunciation instead of a smile seems to me to be way over the top. Are we still in first grade here? I can think of a lot worse things to call Leavitt and would happily do so to her face.
I don’t think this thread has harmed any women.
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### Author:  [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/15 "2025-05-09T19:37:42Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> where they were not intended.
Where is that line drawn?
Plenty of old school racists use racist terms and forms of address without _intending_ to actually be racist. Yet they are still racist. Lots of calling grown men “boys” and so forth. Where I grew up, people would say (and many still say) “don’t Jew me on the price” without thinking twice about it or that it referred to actual people. Has that gotten better over the years? Sure, but not by smiling at the people who do it and letting it go because “they didn’t mean it that way” or “the _real_ bigots use worse language”.
Intentional or no, there is a considerable amount of built-in discriminatory words and phrasing in our culture. While intention does matter, the use of such language should be called out and corrected.
Now, back to the subject of the thread, the other day, my parents (immigrants who watch a limited amount of US news and still limited English) were asking about Leavitt. They thought anybody so young and apparently well spoken who had such a prominent position at the White House must be some brilliant political operative with incredible credentials who graduated from a major university.
After I uncontrollably (and unintentionally) chuckled for a few moments and after apologizing for doing so, I had to tell them the primary qualifications for her position in the Trump White House were “young, blond, and conventionally attractive”, i.e. the Fox News standard.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/16 "2025-05-09T19:42:27Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> I don’t think this thread has harmed any women.
Not exactly a call I (as a man) could ever assume or make.
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### Author:  [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/17 "2025-05-09T19:58:24Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Not exactly a call I (as a man) could ever assume or make.
I also don’t see you telling women to “calm down” or excusing misogynistic terms with “it’s just a joke,” so you’re already three up on wolfpup.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/18 "2025-05-09T20:08:11Z")
Speaking as a woman, I’m perfectly comfortable with the assumption that this thread has not actually harmed any women (or even made any of us less “calm”).
But yeah, I agree, as I said, that gendered/sexualized/racialized insults are problematic even when they’re not directly harming or upsetting anyone.
I regret that this, ISTM, reasonable and mild objection has been latched onto by objectors to the objection, to the extent of mostly derailing the richly deserved pitting of Leavitt (the resumption of which I tried to encourage back in post #7 with suggested alternative epithets).
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/19 "2025-05-09T20:10:43Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> Calm down. I just made an innocent comment suggesting that sometimes our hyper-sensitivities can be over the top.
Oh, good grief. Kimstu and others just made a comment that you appear to me to be showing hyper sensitivity to. And telling somebody who’s quite reasonably doing so to “calm down” a) is absurd and b) is far more likely to piss people off than anything said in this thread prior to that.
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> When someone says “who is this strumpet?” it’s obviously not meant to be taken literally, but is obviously meant to be humourous.
Good grief again. Now you’re seriously trying to pull “it was just a joke”? This entire post of yours is starting to look to me as if it ought to have a sarcasm indicator stuck at the end. [checks to see if one’s there. It isn’t.]
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### Author:  [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2025, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/karoline-leavitt/1018138/20 "2025-05-09T20:18:44Z")
> [@wguy123](#):
>
> Her idol is Baghdad Bob, but she’s also studied the works of Tokyo Rose and Joseph Goebbels.
What, no love for [Lord Haw-Haw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw) and [Axis Sally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_Sally)?
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