Dakota Beacon

Should we really be cheering for Karoline Leavitt's $1 billion lawsuit against The View and Sunny Hostin et al just because we don't like The View and its panel of crazy ladies?  And just because Leavitt is on "our" side?  If we really want an end of lawfare and an end of the malignant cancel culture that has stifled debate in America in recent years, we should not applaud Leavitt for her tactics.  Sure, the View women insulted her, but for someone in her position this is a compliment.  Instead of ham-handed lawsuits, why not wit instead?  Karoline Leavitt is beginning to give off a smart-aleck schoolgirl vibe right now.  Maybe a little less of Karoline would be a blessing.  Mark Styen, another victime of endless lawfare, has said, "The process is the punishment."  Should we, as conservatives, as constitutionalists, desire to shut down The View?  As a practical matter, they have done the right a world of good as representatives of the thining of the left.  It would seem that the First Amendment ought to trump Leavitt's ego.

Europe was sent reeling from J.D. Vance’s forceful and forthright speech at the Munich Security Conference - a bombshell which elicited outrage from some of Europe’s most repressive heads of state.  How dare he?  How dare Trump tell them off through his Vice President?  And Americans generally cheered, along with many of the battered European people whose tyrants have been betraying them for decades.  

There was a lot to think about in Vance’s speech.  He told the truth to people who are used to getting a wink instead.  Germany just finished an election which side-gated the will of their people and outlawed the most important political party in that nation.  Romania just annulled  its own election and arrested the leader of its opposition party, Calin Georgescu.  The hero of the hour has lately been a petty dictator in Ukraine who has jailed, tortured and killed journalists, outlawed political parties, closed churches and jailed priests, shut down media and cancelled all elections while milking the West for financial and military support.  In Britain the native population has been punished for silent prayer, even as their daughters are being groomed and raped.  Europe was way overdue for a check.  Thank you, J.D.

But meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . Trump’s other spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, has been occupying herself with one attempt after another to silence her critics.  She seems to have forgotten that she is a public figure by her own decision to accept Trump’s job offer.  For a while she seemed like a competent choice for the job, not afraid to counter members of an often slanted press.  But the job also comes with some down-side.  The holder of the job comes in for a lot of abuse.  It’s part of the job.  As President Harry S Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Conservatives and most Republicans have complained about the so-called “double standard”, and to the extent that it existed, which was considerable, they were justified.  But despite this, conservative pundits and the conservative public in general, had a field day with the apparently fumbling and overbearing Karin Jean-Pierre and to a lesser extent, her predecessor, Jen Psaki.  There was no holding back during the Biden administration’s era either.  KJP was labeled “incompetent”.  She was nicknamed “Karinge”, some called her “Cabbage Patch”, at least in private.  She was called “stupid” - and often.  She had it coming too.  Her performance was termed “appalling” by Stuart Varney.  Jen Psaki was nicknamed “Peppermint Patty” by one popular podcaster - and all of this was part of their First Amendment rights.  Those on the right have held fast to this most important of our rights under the Constitution and defended all of this criticism.  The right has spoken passionately against the concept of “hate speech” and punishing people for their thoughts and expression.  In fact, the right has introduced a term for this repressive attitude - “cancel culture” - and deplored it.  

Democrats, they said, couldn’t take what they dished out.  Quite rightly, conservatives took aim at the practice of government trying to silence independent media and putting its thumb on the scale for the “legacy” media.  The 2024 election reflected the disgust the public felt at this influence.   After a resounding victory for the right, we all expected that this heavy leaning on the media and the efforts to silence critics of government would end - or at least that it would be dialed back.  

Karoline Leavitt is a public figure.  In America, those in public life do not normally have the same rights with respect to libel and slander protection that a private citizen expects.  Leavitt should have considered this before she took on the most public job this side of the presidency - that of the President’s Press Secretary.  If this lady is not up to taking a lot of heat, she, too, should hie herself out of the kitchen, offer her resignation to Trump and slink away to be a private lawyer somewhere in the hinterlands.  But if she wants to hold onto this very, very public job, this high-profile, easy target position, a job that is, perhaps, thankless, aside from the huge paycheck, she should just ignore or downplay the random insults and slurs . . . and go right on proving them wrong every day.

The women of The View opined that she is, in effect, an airhead, that she would never have been offered her job had Trump not thought she was a “10”.  Well, worse things have been said by a lot of conservative opinion writers about Biden’s choices for the job. Certainly not that anyone thought they were “10s”.  But - so what?  If Leavitt is competent and knows she’s competent, why does she care what some silly woman on The View thinks?  If she’s who we thought she was, this would have been ignored altogether.  (One wag suggested that she should have replied, “If any of the women on The View had been more than a “6” they would not have been on The View”.)

The thin-skinned Leavitt is now suing The View for $1 billion.  This would likely bankrupt the defendant and it has effectively put the show out of business (too bad, because The View was a great help to conservatives - every time one of them opened her mouth she made the left look really stupid).  How, exactly, does this fit with the impactful statement of J.D. Vance at the Munich event?  How do the snide comments and petty insults to Leavitt from The View compare with the flat-out slamming of the admittedly incompetent Jean Pierre?   I’d say Leavitt is getting it fairly easy from the Left, and reasonably so - she is good at the job, if a little too much present herself.  (A little goes a long way with Karoline Leavitt - while she is admirably unafraid of the press and willing to get the non-legacy media seats at her news conferences, she seems like a person who is just looking for a fight with someone, anyone.)

Melania, too, has been a nightmare for the disgusting View women, with her lawsuits.  But with Melania, we did not elect her, she did not accept a position in the administration as Leavitt did.  She is there more or less by default.  There is no reason and no need and no benefit to be derived from ridiculing or insulting Melania, or, for that matter, the rest of the Trump family.  They are not really fair game.  Perhaps her lawsuit should be viewed a little differently.  As to Leavitt, she should just step away from this foolish lawfare, lest she bring disrepute on the Trump administration and its fight against just this kind of thing.  One would think that after four years of the unremitting attack on Trump that he would admonish his staff to stand down.  Leavitt has lost nothing.  If she were as smart as she thinks she is she would just ignore that which is really beneath her.  Let it go.  We all thought we were voting against the climate of hate-speech punishment in 2024.

The women on The View have provided a great service to the right by making the left look idiotic.  Their free use of the First Amendment has been rewarding to the right.  They have exposed the lack of depth of thinking and the true sleaziness of their mindset.  To lose this would be a shame.  Someone should tell Leavitt that she has enough.  She has no right  to silence her critics the way Merk or Starmer do or Biden did.  Lawfare was supposedly decided on in 2024.  America has said it’s tired of this kind of punishment for exercise of the First Amendment.  This is how the left treated Alex Jones, who, whether you agree with him or not, should have been allowed to air his opinion as such.  Trump should publicly reject this approach.  There needs to be something this side of a crippling lawsuit - same for Elon Musk.  Just publish a rebuke and unless you can show a real loss stop the lawfare.  And make no mistake, the process, as Mark Steyn observed, is the punishment.  When a lawsuit can bankrumpt a person regardless of the verdict, we should not encourage this manner of settling our differences.  Resorting to the courtroom to resolve our issues should be a last resort, and not one available to a public figure this side of the most serious issues.  It would be best if Leavitt loses this one - it would be a win for the First Amendment, which is very much more important than her feelings.

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