Trump chooses Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary
Donald Trump announced Friday that 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt will be his White House press secretary as he continues to unveil key officials.
It means that the man who will be the oldest president in history when he is inaugurated in January will have the youngest press secretary ever.
“Karoline Leavitt did a phenomenal job as national press secretary during my historic campaign, and I am pleased to announce that she will serve as White House press secretary,” he said.
‘Karoline is smart, tough and has proven to be a very effective communicator.
“I have every confidence that she will excel on stage and help deliver our message to the American people like us: Make America Great Again.”
Insiders told DailyMail.com there was only one choice to be the public face of the White House, despite last-minute hassles by the likes of Trump lawyer Alina Habba.
Leavitt served as national press secretary for the Trump campaign and impressed senior advisers with combative appearances on CNN.
“It’s her job if she wants it,” an insider recently said.
Karoline Leavitt and her son Niko in an Instagram photo two weeks after she gave birth in July – when she had already returned to work as Trump’s spokeswoman
This role will put her under immense scrutiny as she handles televised briefings with the White House press corps, manages daily interactions with media outlets seeking to hold the administration accountable, and appears on TV.
Still, the 27-year-old is already a seasoned political operative, having worked in Trump’s previous White House, where she was a member of then-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s team.
McEnany said she was an excellent choice for the role.
“Karoline is smart, tough and professional, and I have no doubt she will excel on stage,” she wrote on X. “She is the perfect choice!”
In addition to her White House experience, Leavitt ran for Congress in 2022.
All before you become a mother in the summer.
“I had just brought my newborn baby, my three-day-old baby, home from the hospital,” she said recently in an interview with The curator.
“And I said, ‘I’m going to turn on the television today and watch the rally.’ ”
Leavitt’s former boss at the White House said she was the “perfect choice.”
Karoline Leavitt was the frontrunner to become Donald Trump’s White House press secretary
After working in the Trump White House, Leavitt ran for election in New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district but lost to the Democratic incumbent.
The date was Saturday, July 13, and the meeting took place in Butler, Pennsylvania.
With baby Nicholas in her arms, she watched as Trump was shot in the ear, narrowly avoiding death
“I looked at my husband and said, ‘Looks like I’m going back to work.’
Like many junior members of the press shop, she initially went to work in the Office of Presidential Correspondence, where she helped process and respond to incoming mail, after graduating from Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.
From there, she joined the communications team under McEnany toward the end of Trump’s first term.
When he left office, she went to work for high-profile New York Rep. Elise Stefanik before running for Congress in New Hampshire, the state where she grew up scooping ice cream in her parents’ store.
Her bid to become the youngest woman ever in Congress fell 15,000 votes short in the 2022 midterm elections, when an expected red wave failed to materialize.
Within weeks, she was part of Trump again, joining an allied group before joining the campaign itself earlier this year, and quickly becoming a television fixture despite being pregnant with her first child.
That didn’t detract from her fiery, bomb-throwing style.
In June, she clashed with CNN host Kasie Hunt, who took her off air after they argued over whether the network’s journalists could be neutral moderators in the upcoming debate.
Leavitt said the debate would be a “hostile environment” for Trump, and that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash had been “biased” against him in the past.
“Ma’am, I am going to stop this interview if you continue to attack my colleagues,” Hunt said.
After another back and forth, Hunt ended their conversation and the camera stopped abruptly.
Two weeks later, Leavitt and her husband Nick became parents to baby Nicholas, without realizing that the election was about to enter its most tumultuous period yet, with the assassination attempt and President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race .
After Trump’s victory last week, she promised action from day one.
“The American people gave President Trump a resounding victory, and it gives him a mandate to govern while he campaigned, to deliver on the promises he made,” Leavitt said.
“Including on day one the launch of the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country.