RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 6 sourcesTrump’s youngest-ever spokesperson was successful because she could handle all parts of her job. Her successor may not have that skill set, writes White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg
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A mong White House reporters and Donald Trump’s staff, there is a running joke about how his top communications aides are completely superfluous because the president would be perfectly happy handling the jobs of White House Press Secretary and Communications Director in addition to his role as chief executive.
There’s some truth to that — Trump once famously pretended to be his own spokesperson, “John Barron,” when trying to dish to reporters during his time as a New York tabloid fixture in the 1980s.
Even today he routinely takes calls from journalists on his personal mobile phone, completely bypassing the press office that has, up to now, been headed by Karoline Leavitt. And Leavitt, 28, has been scarce in recent months as her maternity leave turned into what amounted to just a brief return before she announced that she’d be departing the administration to spend more time with her newborn daughter and young son. Thursday marked her last day.
The New Hampshire native isn’t the longest-serving Trump spokesperson — that honor goes to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who spent just under two years in the role before decamping for her home state of Arkansas and mounting a successful run for the governorship once held by her father (who is currently the Trump administration’s ambassador to Israel).
But Leavitt, in her year and seven months as White House Press Secretary , has been the most remarkably successful of the five people who’ve held that job across Trump’s two non-consecutive terms. And her departure creates a hole that the president, try as he might, may not be able to adequately fill.
But what makes Leavitt such a tough act to follow?
It’s not her on-camera pugilism, though her breezy, sunny and aggressive style of repartee has pleased the president, who enjoys seeing his spokespeople act hostilely towards legitimate journalists.
Anyone can be combative on television and deliver insults in response to questions when giving actual answers might displease the boss, which is why two leading candidates to take over Leavitt’s role are reportedly CNN pundit Scott Jennings and former Trump lawyer Alina Habba, the latter of whom was in the running for the job before Trump settled on Leavitt.
That was a bold choice. She was only 26 years old at the time, making her the youngest-ever person to serve as a top White House spokesperson, and unlike many of her predecessors from prior administrations she never spent any time as either a journalist or a top spokesperson for the Pentagon or State Department — two jobs which have been seen as training grounds for the White House press shop.
According to people familiar with the transition period, Trump was impressed by Leavitt’s devotion to the job — she only took days off after delivering a son just before the 2024 assassination attempt on the then-former president in Butler, Pennsylvania — and her willingness to toe the MAGA line with the press.
But Leavitt also brought experience to the table that the big-name hires Trump is considering won’t have.
During the last year of Trump’s first term, Leavitt was an Assistant Press Secretary, one of the lower-level press staffers responsible for handling inquiries from reporters and drafting press releases and statements.
After Trump left office in 2021, she moved to Capitol Hill as Rep. Elise Stefanik’s top spokesperson before an unsuccessful run for a New Hampshire House seat and a stint at MAGA, Inc. (the Super PAC where she’ll have a role after leaving the White House) before returning to the Trump campaign in 2023.
In all those roles, Leavitt was able to develop relationships with reporters and learn the importance of maintaining those relationships — and of making sure the nuts-and-bolts work of a press operation gets done.
That meant when I or any of my colleagues email the press office to ask a question or confirm a fact, it’s a good bet that we’ll get a response by our deadline. That never happened under any of Leavitt’s Trump-era predecessors.
While the Trump press operation can be combative and over-the-top, especially when in writing or for online consumption, Leavitt was able to keep things friendly enough that even as her office was enacting unprecedented changes such as taking over the White House press pool and tryin to ban the Associated Press from the Oval Office, it was far easier to get information from the White House than it was during Trump 1.0.
What’s more, Leavitt managed to maintain friendly relations with reporters and never let the podium performance go beyond the briefing room because she understood that the briefings are only a small part of the symbiotic relationship between the White House and the press.
With Trump’s penchant for big-name hires, it’s unlikely he’ll select someone to fill Leavitt’s shoes with the same deep understanding of how the press office works — or a working relationship with the press corps that has covered Trump for years.
He may be happy with someone who he believes will be a briefing room warrior for him, but without Leavitt’s managerial skills, Trump and his next press secretary may be in for a rough ride.
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