DAVID MARCUS: Karoline Leavitt’s lasting legacy is opening the White House to indie press
At the end of the month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will end a tenure that many consider to be one of the best in the 97-year history of the office. Importantly, she will leave something behind — a vital legacy of opening the briefing room to independent media.
Leavitt handled her office with grace and dexterity, no mean feat for someone communicating for President Donald Trump, who talks more than a morning radio disc jockey. Somehow, she was never in front of his messaging, but also never far behind.
As a queen of cool, Leavitt could not be flustered. She always had an air of confidence and, dare I say, levity. Even when her occasional jocular barbs were tossed at reporters, they rarely turned into acrimony.
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Beyond serving as a model for future press secretaries, Leavitt’s strongest legacy will be her commitment to opening up the White House media ecosystem to small indie news outlets and even social media influencers.
Every press conference opens with a question from the "new media seat," a practice that was much maligned early on by fussy old legacy outlet reporters who rolled their eyes at these commoners gaining entry to their fancy club.
I recall a friend of mine, who was new to the briefing room, telling me of an old regular huffing and puffing and saying, "This is where I stand, you have to move!"
She did not move.
How gauche it was, having mere bloggers or TikTok personalities with this kind of access to the most powerful office in the world. But Leavitt understood that in today’s media, those voices now have as much purchase as major newspapers once did.
It was bumpy at times; the early rollout of binders with files of information on Jeffrey Epstein turned out to be more walk of shame than victory lap. But much more often, these newer outlets were bringing questions to the fore that the legacy media tend to ignore — not through negligence, but because they aren’t niche outlets.
Leavitt understands that the White House press briefing room is a two-way street. Its main function may be to get the president’s message to the people, but the press also brings the concerns of the people to the White House in the form of questions. Influencers, though merrily mocked, have a very direct relationship with their audiences.
Especially younger audiences.
I asked Andrew Kolvet, spokesperson for Turning Point USA — which has a firm focus on educating young voters — about Leavitt’s tenure, and he told me, "She has forced legacy news media to work harder to keep up while opening up multiple seats to new media voices who have had to raise their fact-checking and editorial games in a space that desperately needs it. She sparred with them all in viral exchanges that became must-watch news, even for college kids scrolling their phones."
Kolvet also couldn’t quite resist adding, "As a TPUSA alumni, she was a happy warrior just like Charlie [Kirk]."
Leavitt brought in voices such as Andy Ngo, who has been warning of the advance of Antifa activists for years, and we have seen more of these violent thugs put away — including a leader in Texas who received 100 years in prison for attacking an ICE facility.
Meanwhile, activist reporters like Nick Shirley have been given much attention from Leavitt’s comms shop. He and those like him have revealed potentially billions of dollars in fraud.
The reason that opening the White House press briefing room to independent news media and content creators is Leavitt’s greatest achievement is that, in all likelihood, it will survive not just her moving on, but long after the Trump administration is gone — no matter which party takes power.
This is because, even if a Democrat wins, it will be a tough sell to start kicking out these outlets that the country has been accustomed to hearing from. Even for the left, such a move would probably be too censorious to try.
Yes, Leavitt is a gifted communicator who can be spoken of in the same breath as great press secretaries such as Tony Snow and Ari Fleischer. But ultimately, her greatest contribution is opening the door for new media, and by extension, those this new media represents.
Leavitt will be missed, but her dedication to giving every voice in the media a fair shot at the White House will stay with us for a long time to come.