Leavitt says Truth Social posts are straight from Trump

Andrew Feinberg, The Independent

Just one week after administration officials blamed a staffer for a blatantly racist post which had appeared on President Donald Trump's Truth Social account, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt assured reporters that anything on the president's bespoke social media site is "straight from the horse's mouth."

Leavitt made the startling admission during a press briefing on Wednesday in response to a query about a message Trump had posted moments earlier in which he criticized plans for the UK to enter into a century-long lease with the Mauritian government to maintain control of Diego Garcia, a South Pacific island where the US has established a strategically important airbase.

Trump had taken to Truth Social to announce that he'd been urging Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer not to go through with handing control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius because the proposed 100-year lease on Diego Garcia would be a "big mistake" because "leases are no good when it comes to countries."

"Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100 Year Lease. This land should not be taken away from the UK and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally," he said.

The president's afternoon missive was the latest in a series of abrupt and largely inexplicable reversals regarding the British government's decision to cede control of the Chagos and came just weeks after Trump had walked back previous criticism of the deal by describing the agreement as "the best" the Labour leader could strike.

Asked whether the president's latest Truth Social missive represented an official shift in American policy against the Chagos deal, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing on Wednesday that Trump's post "should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration" because it had come "straight from the horse's mouth."

"When you see it on Truth Social, you know it's directly from President Trump," she said.

But Leavitt's defence of the president's latest social media activity directly contradicts what White House officials were saying just days ago after Trump posted a video to social media which showed Barack and Michelle Obama's faces superimposed onto apes in a jungle, swaying side to side and smiling as the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" played in the background.

The video prompted criticism even from some of Trump's most loyal supporters in Congress, and amid the uproar a White House official told The Independent that a staff member — not Trump himself — had "erroneously made the post."

A number of GOP officeholders and prominent supporters of the president publicly called for the unnamed staffer who'd been blamed for the incident to be fired. But thus far, no one at the White House has been ousted over the incident.

Earlier, President Donald Trump insisted a video posted to his Truth Social account, which featured a clip of Former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys, and was widely condemned as racist, had already been “all over the place for years.”

Speaking with reporters, the president confirmed that he had not fired the White House staffer who he said had “erroneously” made the post last week that featured a brief clip of the Obamas as monkeys in a screen-recording of a video on voter fraud.

Although the White House has an extensive digital communications team that manages the administration's official social media accounts on X and other platforms, access to Trump's own Truth Social account is limited to the president himself plus a tight circle of close aides.

Trump has long been known to do much of his own posting dating back to his early years on Twitter, when he would opine on just about any subject and wasn't shy about mixing it up with rank-and-file platform users.

During his early years as a candidate and his first term as president, much of his online activity was managed by Daniel Scavino, a longtime confidant of the president who has worked for him in one capacity or another since he was a teenage golf caddy at Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey club.

Scavino, who returned to the White House with Trump last year with the rank of Assistant to the President and Deputy White House Chief of Staff, is understood to still be one of those few aides trusted with access to Trump's personal social media megaphone.

But with the 50-year-old taking on a broader range of responsibilities in Trump's second term - including running the White House Personnel Office, The Independent understands that the task of managing the president's Truth Social output on a day-to-day basis often rests on the shoulders of Natalie Harp, an ex-One America News Network personality who serves as a personal assistant to Trump and works just outside the Oval Office.

The Independent further understands that Harp is often the person to whom Trump dictates the text of Truth Social posts — when he is not posting himself. The scope of her involvement in the post is unknown, however, and she has not been accused of making it. Harp did not respond to an emailed enquiry from The Independent.

A former White House and campaign staffer from Trump's first term told The Independent that the president's late-night posting-and-reposting sprees were often his own doing.