Amid U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, a claim spread online that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "America cannot function if President Trump has to deal with co-equal branches of government having the ability to check his power."
Social media users on X, Threads, Instagram and Facebook attributed the above quote to Leavitt; Snopes readers also wrote in to ask if the quote above was accurate.
However, while Leavitt began multiple statements with "America cannot function" during a May 29, 2025, news briefing, she did not go on to say the rest of the aforementioned quote. Thus, we rate this claim as an incorrect attribution.
A Google search for the exact quote online users attributed to Leavitt returned no results from reputable news outlets, nor did searches for specific phrases used in the purported quote alongside Leavitt's name. If Leavitt had said that checks on executive power were impeding the country's functioning, news outlets would certainly have covered the statement.
Some Threads users claimed that while Leavitt did not say the exact quote, the statement correctly paraphrases what she actually said. However, that is a matter of opinion, not fact. Leavitt's actual statement argued that a decision by a federal trade court unanimously ruling against U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping "Liberation Day" global tariff policy represented judicial overreach.
Here is the full statement from Leavitt, starting at 1:09 (emphasis ours):
President Trump correctly believes that America cannot function safely long-term if we are unable to scale advanced domestic manufacturing capacity, however, our own secure critical supply chains and our defense industrial base is dependent on foreign adversaries.
Three judges of the U.S. Court of International Trade disagreed and brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump, to stop him from carrying out the mandate that the American people gave him. These judges failed to acknowledge that the president of the United States has core foreign affairs powers and authority given to him by Congress to protect the United States' economy and national security. Congress had created the National Emergency Act to provide the congressional framework to strike down improper IEPA use.
And any questions over whether President Trump improperly imposed these IEPA tariffs were already adjudicated in Congress following "Liberation Day." Congress firmly rejected an effort led by Sen. Rand Paul and Democrats to terminate the president's reciprocal tariffs. The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.
This wasn't the first quote misattributed to Leavitt we've investigated. We also looked into false claims the press secretary said, "avoid woke things like math, and you'll love the tariffs."