Did White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt write a post on X about the age of consent that, in part, said that "Mary was as young as 12 when she gave birth to Jesus"? No, that's not true: Her account didn't show such a post and a viral image pretending to be a screenshot of it appears to be fake. It originally appeared on a Reddit forum dedicated to posting faked X screenshots.
The claim appeared in a post on Threads on July 25, 2025. It opened:
I thought we as a Nation have heard and seen some of the most egregious actions from tRUMP and this administration and then I see this post from Karoline Leavitt today, July 24, 2025. So what I hear you saying karolineleavitt is, TRUMP IS ALL OVER THE EPSTEIN FILES, ON THE CLIENT LIST AND YOU ARE TRYING TO JUSTIFY THE RAPING AND SEX TRAFFICKING OF UNDERAGE GIRLS AND BOYS. Just wanted to be clear. You're a disgusting troll your post now makes us all concerned for the safety of your daughter.
The post shared an image that looked like it could have been a screenshot of Leavitt's post on X that read:
Scholars say Mary was as young as 12 when she gave birth to Jesus. Mohammed consummated his marriage with Aisha when she was just 9. Juliet Capulet was 14 in Shakespeare's famous story. The point being that a when a girl is "ready" is predicated purely on arbitrary cultural norms.
This is how it appeared on Threads at the time of writing:
(Image source: screenshot of the @jr._johnpatrick post on Threads.com)
A search across Leavitt's account on X did not produce a match to an exact fragment from the purported screenshot:
(Image source: screenshot of search results across the @PressSec account on x.com)
Searches across news articles on Google (archived here) and Yahoo (archived here) didn't yield credible reports corroborating that Leavitt actually wrote such a post about the age of consent.
The image that purported to be a screenshot of Leavitt's post originated from an entry (archived here) on Reddit, where it was published on July 24, 2025, under the caption:
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt muses on age of consent apropos of nothing.
(Image source: screenshot of the TOTALLYREALTWEETS subreddit on Reddit.com)
The image was uploaded to the subreddit named "TOTALLYREALTWEETS" whose apparently sarcastic self-description (archived here) read:
A very serious subreddit for screenshots of completely authentic tweets that are 100% really real.
