Who is Karoline Leavitt?: A look at the youngest woman ever named to serve as White House press secretary
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – President-elect Donald Trump announced Karoline Leavitt will return to the White House next year as his press secretary, making the 27-year-old the youngest White House press secretary in U.S. history and notching another massive career benchmark.
Leavitt has been a fierce defender of Trump throughout his hard-fought campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, which included Democrats and the Harris campaign lobbing attacks at Trump that he is a "fascist" and on par with Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler, two assassination attempts and crisscrossing the nation to rally support for the former president.
"Karoline Leavitt did a phenomenal job as the National Press Secretary on my Historic Campaign, and I am pleased to announce she will serve as White House Press Secretary," Trump said in a statement announcing Leavitt as his press secretary this month.
"Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again."
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Ahead of her appointment as the youngest press secretary in the nation’s history – unseating President Richard Nixon’s press secretary Ron Ziegler, who was 29 when he took the same position in 1969 – Leavitt had long been in Trump’s orbit and also made her own political mark with a congressional run in 2022.
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Leavitt served in Trump’s first administration as assistant press secretary before working as New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s communications director following the 2020 election. Leavitt launched a congressional campaign in her home state of New Hampshire during the 2022 cycle, winning her primary, but losing the election to a Democrat.
During her time on the campaign trail for Trump this cycle, Leavitt sparred with liberal media outlets about Trump’s candidacy, fielded media inquiries about the 45th president’s policies and vision for the U.S., served as one of Trump’s top defenders amid legal battles and political landmines lobbed by both the Biden and Harris campaign, and maneuvered an unprecedented campaign cycle that saw President Biden drop out of the running in July amid heightened concerns over his mental acuity and age.
She was among the dozens of Republican elected officials and Trump supporters who joined Trump in Manhattan court over the spring as he faced trial over 34 counts of falsifying business records, which Trump repeatedly slammed as a "sham" case. She also reported that with the job as the campaign’s national press secretary, she became accustomed to Trump's "sleep schedule" – which has famously only consisted of roughly four or five hours of rest before getting to work – and joined him at rallies across the nation and at the campaign’s headquarters in Florida.
Leavitt currently serves as the Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman ahead of Jan. 20, when Trump will be sworn in as president.
Leavitt made national headlines in June, before Biden dropped out of the race, when CNN’s Kasie Hunt cut her microphone off as she argued on air that CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would be politically biased against Trump while moderating a debate between Biden and the now president-elect. Biden ultimately performed terribly during the debate, which opened the floodgates to traditional Democrat allies calling on him to drop out of the presidential race and pass the torch to a younger generation.
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"That’s why President Trump is knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network, on CNN, with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known over the past eight years. And their biased coverage of him," Leavitt said to Hunt during the interview previewing the debate.
"So I‘ll just say my colleagues, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have acquitted themselves as professionals as they have covered campaigns and interviewed candidates from all sides of the aisle. I‘ll also say that if you talk to analysts of previous debates, that if you’re attacking the moderators, you’re usually losing," Hunt responded.
As Hunt tried to redirect the interview back to previewing the debate, Leavitt said it would take just a few minutes to pull up examples of Tapper’s anti-Trump rhetoric across the years.
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"Ma'am, I'm going to stop this interview if you're going to continue to attack my colleagues," Hunt said, before Leavitt continued that she was "stating facts" about what CNN hosts had previously said about Trump.
"I'm sorry, guys, we're going to come back out to the panel," Hunt said. "Karoline, thank you very much for your time. You are welcome to come back at any point. She is welcome to come back and speak about Donald Trump, and Donald Trump will have equal time to Joe Biden when they both join us later this week in Atlanta for this debate."
Following the mic getting cut, Leavitt told Fox News Digital at the time that, "CNN cutting off my microphone for bringing up a debate moderator’s history of anti-Trump lies just proves our point that President Trump will not be treated fairly in Thursday’s debate. Yet President Trump is still willing to go into this 3-1 fight to bring his winning message to the American people, and he will win."
As Leavitt juggled the media, she also spent the first six months in her role as Trump campaign national press secretary while pregnant with her first child. Ahead of Mother’s Day this year, Leavitt touted the importance women and mothers have within the Trump orbit and celebrating that in July, she would welcome her own baby.
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"Joe Biden can’t even define what a ‘woman’ is, and his Administration disrespectfully refers to mothers as ‘birthing people.’ Joe Biden has left working moms and families behind by creating the worst inflation crisis in decades, welcoming millions of illegal immigrants into our country to commit crimes, and allowing violent protests to erupt on college campuses," Leavitt exclusively told Fox News Digital in May.
The campaign touted that it employed dozens of moms during the election cycle, including Leavitt and recently-announced White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. He has also hired hundreds of working moms since 2016, including high-profile names such as Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany. RNC and Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez and Trump legal spokeswoman Alina Habba are also both mothers of young kids.
"We have a really welcoming environment for children at the office, the headquarters in West Palm Beach," Leavitt told the Conservateur in October. "You know, we joke that on Saturdays, it’s bring-your-kid-to-work day."
Months following the article touting the women and moms on the campaign, Democrats came under fire in October after Harris campaign surrogate Mark Cuban said "you never see [Trump] around strong, intelligent women."
"This is extremely insulting to the thousands of women who work for President Trump, and the tens of millions of women who are voting for him," Leavitt shot back at Cuban. "These women are mothers, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders, and they are, indeed, strong and intelligent, despite what Mark Cuban and Kamala Harris say."
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Leavitt gave birth to her son in July and had planned to take maternity leave before a would-be assassin opened fire on Trump and his supporters at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, just days ahead of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Trump was injured on the side of his head, while two other rally-goers were also injured, and local dad and Trump supporter Corey Comperatore was fatally shot.
Leavitt said the assassination attempt sparked her to jump back into the campaign just days after giving birth.
"I had just brought my newborn, my three-day-old baby home from the hospital. And I said, ‘I’m going to turn on the television and watch the rally today,’" Leavitt recounted to the Conservateur of watching the tragic and shocking rally on July 13.
"I looked at my husband and said, ‘Looks like I’m going back to work.’"
She also recounted that following the birth of her son, she received a call from Trump congratulating her before having her chat with former first lady Melania Trump.
"It was incredibly warm and kind," she said of Trump’s call. "He wanted to check in. He asked me how I was doing." Trump then passed the phone to his wife, the Conservateur reported.
"Mrs. Trump and I talked about how wonderful it is to be a mother to a boy. They spoke about their love for Barron, and the president cracked a joke: ‘We have a little boy, but he’s not so little now!’" she said.
Leavitt predicted Trump would notch a win this cycle, repeatedly pointing to his message of unity and uplifting Americans of all races and creeds, his vow to secure the border and strengthen the economy following spiraling inflation under the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump was declared the victor in the race late into the evening on Election Day, after sweeping battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. He ultimately secured 312 electoral votes and locked down the popular vote.
Leavitt celebrated the win as the "Greatest political comeback in HISTORY!" where Trump "defeated the big tech oligarchs who tried to silence him, the weaponized system of justice against him, and the fake news that has lied about him and his supporters for years."
Just over a week after his win at the ballot boxes, Trump named Leavitt as his White House press secretary pick.
"Thank you, President Trump, for believing in me. I am humbled and honored," she posted to her X account following the announcement.
"Let’s MAGA!"