Karoline Leavitt delivered her first official White House press briefing Tuesday afternoon – becoming the youngest White House press secretary to take the podium.
Leavitt, 27, was met with sharp questions from journalists about President Donald Trump’s busy first week back in the White House. While it was her first time engaging with reporters in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Leavitt already has experience serving as a fierce defender of Trump before the media.
As national press secretary, Leavitt spent much of the 2024 presidential race as a public-facing spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, shooting off at times combative statements via email to reporters and boosting Trump’s talking points in appearances on conservative and national media, such as Fox News. During the first Trump administration, she worked in the White House communications office.
“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,” Trump said in a November statement when he tapped her for the position.
It is unclear how often Leavitt plans to hold news briefings. During Trump’s first term, he had four press secretaries – Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany – and Grisham never once held a briefing from the podium.
Leavitt is the youngest person to serve as White House press secretary.
She has touted her Gen Z credentials in the past, having launched her own congressional campaign at the age of 23 to represent her hometown in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District. She beat a more moderate Republican in the 2022 primary but ultimately failed to unseat incumbent Rep. Chris Pappas (D).
Leavitt studied at St. Anselm College, a Catholic liberal arts college in New Hampshire, where she was one of a small number of conservatives on campus. Though her childhood dream was to become a broadcast reporter, Leavitt took an internship at the White House under the Trump administration after graduating in 2019 and worked up to the job of assistant press secretary.
After Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, Leavitt worked as communications director for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), who is Trump’s nominee for U.N. ambassador. Leavitt helped Stefanik as she campaigned to replace then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), a frequent target of Trump’s attacks, as GOP conference chair.
During the 2024 race, Leavitt accompanied Trump to rallies, campaign events and his court appearances in Manhattan. She often want on conservative and national media to echo many of Trump’s talking points, calling the criminal cases against him a “witch hunt that comes from the top, comes from Joe Biden” and often describing Democrats as out-of-touch liberals ignoring the issues facing Americans.
Leavitt has shared Trump’s combative approach to the news media, saying during a warm-up speech at one of his rallies, “I have the great pleasure of fighting the fake news media all day, every day.” CNN ended a live interview with her in June when she accused anchors Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, whom the network chose to moderate the first presidential debate of the 2024 election, of bias.
She has been vocal about her role as a working mother, sharing that she was hired as the Trump campaign’s national press secretary shortly after learning she was pregnant with her first child. And she was quick to return to work after delivering her son, going on television just four days later.
“The president literally put his life on the line to win this election. The least I could do is get back to work quickly,” she said in an interview with conservative women’s outlet the Conservateur, which she shared on her Instagram.
In the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration, Leavitt served as a vocal champion of the president’s Cabinet picks as they navigated their confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill. In a recent Fox News interview, she touted the nominees as “brilliant” picks and slammed Democrats for the questions they were asking of them.
“The Democrats have not yet found a cure to Trump derangement syndrome, and their party is still in complete disarray,” she said on Fox News this month.
(c) 2025, The Washington Post · Sabrina Rodriguez