So many Republicans see the president as infallible that even inconsequential slip-ups must be denied in Orwellian fashion.
There’s a straight line from "Sharpiegate" to Karoline Leavitt denying that Trump accidentally referenced Iceland when he meant Greenland.
We’re apparently supposed to see Trump as infallible, so even minor and inconsequential slip-ups must be denied in Orwellian fashion. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-01-22T14:59:44.118Z
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-house-insists-trump-didnt-say-what-everyone-heard-him-say-about-iceland
Donald Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was an embarrassing mess. The American president peddled a series of absurd falsehoods, he needlessly targeted U.S. allies with baseless whining, and he reminded much of the Western world over the course of an hour and a half why the Trump-led United States has seen its international standing collapse.
But one part of the Republican’s weird, meandering remarks generated attention for an unexpected reason.
Trump: “I'm helping Europe. I'm helping NATO, and until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy…. But now what I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection"
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-01-21T16:07:38.233Z
.....It would have been easy for the White House simply to acknowledge that the president had misspoken. Since everyone misspeaks from time to time, this likely would have generated very little attention.
But that’s not what happened. The New York Times reported:
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, denied that Mr. Trump had misspoken, responding in a social media post to a reporter who wrote that he had appeared to mix the countries up multiple times.
‘No he didn’t,’ she wrote to the reporter. ‘His written remarks referred to Greenland as a ‘piece of ice’ because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here.’
In other words, Leavitt would have us believe that when Trump said “Iceland” four times, he was really commenting on “ice land.” As in a land of ice.
In context, that is obviously preposterous. The Orwellian pushback, however, was oddly familiar.....
When news outlets noted the president’s error, Trump took great offense, insisting he was right, despite the obvious fact that he was mistaken. It set in motion a series of increasingly ridiculous events, culminating in Trump displaying a map to which he literally took a pen, drawing a bump onto the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast so he could make the scientific prediction conform retroactively to his mistake. (The mess became known as “Sharpiegate.”)
Leavitt’s line on the president’s “Iceland” reference is a page from the same book. Since Trump’s loyalists insist he is incapable of being wrong, even minor, inconsequential slip-ups have to be rejected and denied.
The tactics make the White House and its allies look worse. By all appearances, they don’t care.
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