White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed President Donald Trump was the creator of the phrase “peace through strength,” despite it being originally credited to a Roman emperor.

Leavitt appeared Monday morning on Fox News to address the United States’ attack on Iran this weekend. In the clip, surfaced by journalist Aaron Rupar, she said the bombing was an example of Trump’s devotion to peace.

Leavitt: "Nobody knows what it means to accomplish peace through strength better than President Trump. He is the one who came up with that motto and that foreign policy doctrine." pic.twitter.com/aBGjW0aa28

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 23, 2025

“Nobody knows what it means to accomplish peace through strength better than President Trump. He is the one who came up with that motto and that foreign policy doctrine. He successfully implemented it in his first term; and this is one of many steps he is taking to successfully implement peace in his second term,” Leavitt said.

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Despite Leavitt’s claims, the phrase is first attributed to the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian ruled from 117 to 138 AD. He is perhaps best known in modern times for building Hadrian’s Wall, a wall running across what’s now England originally used as a defensive fortification by the Roman Empire. Hadrian’s Wall still exists and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

The doctrine of peace through strength has also been used throughout American history. President George Washington famously said that “if we desire to secure peace…it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.” In the Federalist Papers, founding father Alexander Hamilton argued for keeping a standing army during peacetime as a deterrent force.

“Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security… The improvements in the art of navigation, have, as to the facility of communication, rendered distant nations, in a great measure, neighbors. Britain and Spain are among the principal maritime powers of Europe. A future concert of views between these nations ought not to be regarded as improbable,” Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 24. “Politicians have ever with great reason considered the ties of blood as feeble and precarious links of political connection. These circumstances, combined, admonish us not to be too sanguine in considering ourselves as entirely out of the reach of danger.”

The phrase has also been used as the motto of the United States’ Eighth Air Force as well as the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.

Though “peace through strength” has been used throughout history, in modern times, it’s been most associated with the aircraft carrier’s namesake. President Ronald Reagan first used the phrase during his 1980 campaign to unseat President Jimmy Carter to describe his approach to foreign policy. The phrase has been used in every Republican Party platform since then.

In other words, if Trump did indeed “come up with that motto,” as Leavitt says, the media has been focusing on the wrong things. The man clearly has time-travel technology he’s keeping secret from the rest of the world.

Image via Reuters