Leavitt’s MAGA Minute: Powerhouse Week Recap; Stacey Abrams Admits Getting $2B from Biden EPA for Appliances

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered her weekly “MAGA Minute” on March 8, 2025, summarizing what she called “another very busy week” at the White House: Trump’s record-breaking joint address to Congress, DJ Daniel’s honorary Secret Service appointment, Marc Fogel’s honoring, the strategic Bitcoin reserve, the Take It Down Act, nearly 20,000 manufacturing and auto jobs created, and Trump’s meeting with released Gaza hostages. The compilation also featured Stacey Abrams on MSNBC explaining how “the EPA said OK, great, go for it” when she proposed using $2 billion in taxpayer money to buy people new home appliances — the program Trump had spotlighted in his joint address as a $1.9 billion giveaway to a politically connected Democrat.

The MAGA Minute: Week in Review

Leavitt opened with her signature format — a rapid-fire recap of the week’s accomplishments that had become a popular social media feature.

“It’s been another very busy week here, so this may be over a minute, but let’s go over everything that happened here at the White House,” Leavitt said.

She catalogued the highlights in sequence:

“The President gave a record-breaking joint address to Congress where he laid out his bold vision to renew the American dream.”

“He introduced the world to DJ Daniel, a young boy fighting brain cancer who was sworn into the United States Secret Service.”

“The President also honored Marc Fogel, an American hostage who President Trump freed from Russian captivity last month.”

She then addressed the Democratic response: “Yet the Democrats stood for none of these incredible Americans and their heroic stories. They did not stand for no taxes on tips, the capturing of an ISIS terrorist, defeating inflation, unleashing American energy, or ending the fraud, waste, and abuse in our government.”

Leavitt continued through the week’s agenda items:

“First Lady Melania Trump held a roundtable discussion on online protection and the Take It Down Act, a bill that will add protections for children who are targets of malicious online deepfakes and attacks.”

“The President also kept his promise to the crypto industry, establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve and hosting prominent crypto voices for a roundtable at the White House.”

“We also had a historic jobs day, with nearly 20,000 manufacturing and automobile sector jobs created in one month.”

She added the foreign policy dimension: “President Trump also met with eight of the recently released hostages from Gaza and heard their stories. And after that meeting, he made it clear to Hamas: release all of the hostages, or else.”

Leavitt closed: “America is back, and we’ll see you next week for the MAGA Minute.”

The MAGA Minute format was effective because it compressed an extraordinary volume of activity into a digestible summary that viewers could share on social media. Each item was a headline in itself — an address to Congress, a cancer survivor honored, a hostage freed, a Bitcoin reserve created, 20,000 jobs — and together they created an overwhelming impression of a presidency operating at a pace that no critic could match.

Stacey Abrams: “The EPA Said OK, Go For It”

The compilation then featured footage of Stacey Abrams appearing on MSNBC to explain the $1.9 billion program that Trump had highlighted during his joint address as an example of waste.

Abrams described her involvement: “In 2023 and 2024, I led a program called Vitalizing DeSoto. We worked in a tiny town in South Georgia to demonstrate that by replacing energy-inefficient appliances with efficient appliances, you can lower your cost.”

She cited results from the pilot program: “For 75% of the community, they got appliances that are lowering their bills right now. We had one woman who saw her electric bill cut in half, from $180 to $98. That’s what we delivered.”

Abrams then described how the pilot expanded into a $2 billion federal program. “Based on that program, a coalition of organizations — famous organizations — came together and said to the EPA: if we can do this here, we can do this for millions more Americans. Let us invest the money of America in lowering the cost for Americans,” she said.

The EPA’s response: “And the EPA said, ‘OK, great, go for it.’”

The interview was striking because Abrams appeared to view the arrangement as a straightforward success story — a small-town pilot that scaled into a national program. But from the administration’s perspective, the footage confirmed exactly what Trump had alleged: a politically connected Democrat had been given nearly $2 billion in taxpayer money through a program that was designed with minimal oversight, created through NGOs that in some cases “didn’t even exist before the pot of money emerged” (as EPA Administrator Zeldin had described), and structured to distribute federal funds while limiting government accountability.

The contrast between Abrams’ framing — a compassionate program that lowered electricity bills — and the administration’s framing — a $2 billion political slush fund disguised as climate policy — illustrated the fundamental debate over government spending that DOGE had been exposing. Programs that sounded virtuous in press releases and MSNBC interviews looked very different when examined through the lens of fiscal accountability and taxpayer protection.

Trump had cited the program by name during his joint address as “$1.9 billion to a recently created decarbonization of homes committee, headed up, and we know she’s involved, just at the last moment the money was passed over by a woman named Stacey Abrams. Have you ever heard of her?” The Abrams MSNBC appearance, in which she openly described receiving the money and explained how the EPA had approved the arrangement, provided the administration with a clip in which the subject of the allegation confirmed the basic facts herself.

The Appliance Strategy

The deeper issue the Abrams clip exposed was the Biden administration’s approach to climate policy. Rather than simply regulating appliances to be more energy-efficient — which the administration had done through tighter efficiency standards — the EPA had simultaneously funded a program to buy new “green” appliances for millions of Americans using taxpayer money distributed through a politically connected intermediary.

The strategy created a circular logic that critics found outrageous: the government made existing appliances less functional through efficiency regulations, then spent billions buying replacement appliances through programs run by political allies. The regulatory burden created the problem; the spending program created the solution; and the political class profited from both sides of the transaction.

For Trump, who had repeatedly mocked Biden-era appliance regulations — “my dishwasher has to run for two hours,” “water barely comes out” — the Abrams program was the perfect illustration of how government dysfunction was not accidental but designed. The regulations and the spending programs were two sides of the same coin, and both enriched the people who designed them at taxpayer expense.

Key Takeaways

• Leavitt’s MAGA Minute recapped the week: joint address to Congress, DJ Daniel, Marc Fogel, Bitcoin reserve, Take It Down Act, 20,000 manufacturing jobs, and Gaza hostage meeting.
• She noted Democrats “stood for none of these incredible Americans” including DJ Daniel, Fogel, or the capturing of an ISIS terrorist.
• Stacey Abrams confirmed on MSNBC that the Biden EPA gave her organization $2 billion after a small-town pilot: “The EPA said, ‘OK, great, go for it.’”
• The program replaced home appliances with “efficient” alternatives, with Abrams citing one woman whose electric bill dropped from $180 to $98.
• The administration viewed the program as a political slush fund created through NGOs with minimal oversight, consistent with DOGE findings about the Biden EPA’s $20 billion climate spending.