In brief
- Karoline Leavitt is leaving the Trump administration to focus on her family.
- Her tenure was characterised by steadfast allegiance to Donald Trump and an overhaul of the White House's relationship with the press.
Karoline Leavitt is leaving her post as White House press secretary after 20 months marked by fierce loyalty to United States President Donald Trump and fiery clashes with the media.
As Trump's highest-ranking spokesperson, the 28-year-old became known for her unwavering defences of the president, her embrace of MAGA and "new media" voices including podcasters and influencers, and her amplification of false, misleading and highly contentious claims from the podium.
Trump announced she was leaving her role at the end of the month to spend more time with her family, and would continue to serve as one of his "top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party". Leavitt has two young children, the first born during Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and the second in May this year.
She was the first White House press secretary history to give birth while serving in the role, and the youngest person ever to hold the position.
Leavitt has been press secretary since Trump returned to office in January last year, making her the president's second-longest-serving press secretary after Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served from 2017 to 2019.
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Trump's next press secretary will be his sixth across two terms. He is yet to indicate who may replace Leavitt.
Here are five elements that captured Leavitt's approach to the role.
Opening the briefing room to influencers
Leavitt and White House communications director Steven Cheung revamped the Trump administration's already-confrontational posture toward the media.
The Trump administration began handpicking which journalists would receive access to the president, overhauling the long-running system established by the independent White House Correspondents Association.
The "press pool" was traditionally a rotation chosen by the industry group to ensure media outlets had uniform access to the president and could relay his activities to the public and to other journalists who could not attend smaller gatherings.
In one of Leavitt's first moves as press secretary last year, she introduced a "new media seat" in the White House briefing room. Continuing Trump's longstanding attacks on establishment journalists, she vowed to give new media voices a more prominent role in covering his presidency.
"We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators to apply for credentials to cover this White House," she said in January 2025.
While some commentators characterised it as recognition of a changing media landscape, others accused the administration of using it as a lever to reward outlets whose coverage was viewed as favourable towards the president.
The 'Gulf of America' saga
Early last year, Trump signed an executive order declaring the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the "Gulf of America".
Many news organisations, including the Associated Press (AP), continued to refer to it by its longstanding name. The AP stylebook is used as a standard by many newsrooms, including those outside of the US.
The newsroom's refusal to change its style triggered a furious backlash from the White House, which accused the organisation of "irresponsible and dishonest" reporting and barred its journalists from certain spaces traditionally accessible to the press pool.
The AP sued Leavitt and two other senior White House officials, arguing it was being punished for its editorial choices and triggering a long legal battle over press freedom.
At the time, Leavitt defended the move as a bid to hold journalists accountable for spreading "lies".
"It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America," she said. "I'm not sure why news outlets don't want to call it that, but that is what it is."
Her close relationship with Trump
Leavitt's steadfast loyalty to Trump was one of the defining features of her tenure. Trump, too, often expressed deep praise and admiration for his press secretary.
"She’s become a star," Trump said in an exchange on the right-wing NewsMax channel in August that went viral. "It’s that face. It’s that brain. It’s those lips, the way they move. They move like she’s a machine gun."
Leavitt has advocated for Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, described him as the "most transparent and accessible president" in history, and frequently spoken of her personal admiration for him.
In July 2024, she returned to work from maternity leave several days after giving birth following the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
"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 told a conservative women's blog later that year.
Her defences of Trump's war effort in Iran
Despite broad public disapproval of the US military action against Iran, Leavitt has remained one of the administration's most forceful defenders of Trump's handling of the war.
In April, Trump drew significant international backlash when he threatened that a "whole civilisation will die" if Iran would not agree to a deal.
Responding to criticism of his rhetoric, Leavitt said it was a "very very strong threat that led to results" and "it was not an empty threat".
The Jeffrey Epstein controversy
Trump has been dogged by fallout over the Jeffrey Epstein files throughout his second term. Leavitt was repeatedly thrust into the administration's efforts to handle the controversy, as questions mounted over Trump's past relationship with the convicted sex offender and his administration's handling of the files associated with the deceased financier.
In November, Democrats released emails from Epstein in which he wrote that one of his victims had "spent hours at my house" with Trump.
Leavitt, at the time, said the emails "prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong".
— With additional reporting by Reuters
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