It’s the kind of political theater that makes you stop scrolling and start watching—the White House press room, Fox News’ Peter Doocy sharpening his questions, and Karoline Leavitt, the Trump administration’s newest mouthpiece, caught in a tangle of her own making. If you blinked, you missed the moment: Doocy pressed, Leavitt dodged, and suddenly the world saw the mask slip.

Leavitt, who’s made a name for herself as the administration’s attack dog, has long strutted onto the stage with her cross necklace shining and her talking points sharper than a razor. But lately, that cross is conspicuously absent, and the speculation is deliciously wicked: did it start to burn every time she lied? Because if so, it would have gone up in flames at yesterday’s presser.

The topic was Jeffrey Epstein—the billionaire sex trafficker whose client list is the stuff of legend and conspiracy. The Trump camp, with its parade of surrogates from Cash Patel to Pam Bondi, has been promising the list’s release for months, hinting darkly that the Biden DOJ is covering for powerful friends. But when Doocy asked Leavitt point-blank about the vanished list, she spun a web of half-truths, insisting that Attorney General Roberts was only referring to “the entirety of all paperwork” on her desk. The client list, she claimed, was just another piece of the pile.

It was a lie so transparent you could see straight through it. Fox News, usually the friendliest of fire, wasn’t buying it. The MAGA faithful, obsessed with Epstein’s secrets, are left grumbling that maybe the real reason the list hasn’t come out is because it might implicate Trump himself. The irony is almost too much—conspiracy theorists who can spot a lizard person at a hundred yards suddenly can’t make the leap that the man they worship might be on the list.

But Leavitt’s troubles didn’t end there. Pressed again on Trump’s own wild statements—this time about a supposed U.S. “takeover” of Gaza—she tried to rewrite history, insisting the president never said such a thing. But the receipts are everywhere, and Trump’s own words keep tripping her up. It’s a masterclass in denial, and the room knows it.

Does she feel shame? Does she feel humiliation? Watching Leavitt, you’d think not. She stands at that podium, day after day, spinning stories, dehumanizing her opponents, and smiling through the cruelty. It’s as if shame is a foreign language—one she’s never bothered to learn. “It’s a level of emotional detachment that’s almost sociopathic,” says Dr. Linda Carver, a political psychologist. “You can’t lie like that, in public, without losing touch with your own humanity.”

And she’s not alone. The administration is filled with these unblinking faces, eager to paper over Trump’s latest outrage, to justify the unjustifiable, to turn natural disasters into political weapons. When Texas was hit by catastrophic floods, another Trump loyalist, Christine, thanked God for “hundreds of lives saved”—never mind the children lost because agencies were gutted and warnings ignored. Thoughts and prayers, they say, as if that’s enough. “It’s the same script after every tragedy,” sighs emergency response expert Mark Feldman. “Deflect, distract, deny, and blame the other side for politicizing disaster.”

But the hypocrisy is suffocating. The same voices that howl about FEMA money for immigrants are the ones who slash budgets for weather services, then blame the victims when disaster strikes. They demonize the desperate, treat brown and black families as less than human, and then wrap themselves in the flag and the Bible, all while the cameras roll.

Back in the press room, Leavitt’s composure is cracking. Fox News, once her safe haven, is now poking holes in her stories. The MAGA base is restless, hungry for the Epstein list, and starting to ask uncomfortable questions. The rest of America is watching, wondering just how far these people will go to avoid a single moment of accountability.

Because here’s the truth: normal people want to save lives, to show kindness, to treat others with dignity. But for Leavitt and her ilk, hatred is the real fuel. It’s not just indifference—it’s a calculated choice to dehumanize, to divide, to stoke outrage for power’s sake.

And as she stands there, the cross gone, the lies piling up, you have to wonder: does Karoline Leavitt ever look in the mirror and feel even a flicker of humiliation? Or is shame just one more thing she’s willing to sacrifice for the cause? For now, the answer is as clear as her trembling voice at that podium—she’ll say anything, do anything, to keep the show going.

But the audience is catching on. And this time, even Fox News isn’t clapping.