Did White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt say that "Trump mistook Greenland for Iceland" because "they share the same border"? No, that's not true: The internet rumor attributing those words to her originated from a satire account. Lead Stories found no credible sources citing the quote in question as Leavitt's actual words.
The claim originated from a post (archived here) published on X on January 23, 2026. It opened:
Karoline Leavitt: 'I can understand why President Trump mistook Greenland for Iceland. They share the same border.'
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post x.com/TheFungi669)
The account's description (archived here), however, clearly implied that it's not a media organization or a government official. It read:
As my high IQ followers know, I have never faked a sarcasm.
A search for the exact quote attributed to Leavitt showed (archived here) that the claim was shared on X, but none of those accounts actually belonged to the White House press secretary.
Searches on Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) did not show any credible media organization citing the supposed quote.
Lead Stories manually searched Leavitt's account on X, too. But it did not produce a match for the quote, either:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of search results page at x.com)
On January 21, 2026 in a speech at the World Economic Forum gathering at Davos, Switzerland, U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to have confused Greenland and Iceland (archived here).
Leavitt did comment on that, but what she wrote on X (archived here) was not what the post reviewed in this fact check attributed to her.
