White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave her position at the end of the month, US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, leaving the president without one of his most trusted advisers ahead of November’s midterm elections. Leavitt will be an outside communications adviser and party operative who will shape the future contours of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, she and Trump said in statements. In a social media post, Leavitt, 28, said her goal was to spend more time with her young children. She gave birth to a daughter, her second child, in May and recently returned from maternity leave. “Karoline has been a true leader in the White House and has done a phenomenal job fighting for justice and freedom since 2018, including our historic 2024 re-election campaign,” Trump said in a social media post, calling Leavitt “one of the best White House press secretaries in the history of the office.” Leavitt called his role in the White House “the honor and adventure of a lifetime.” To display this YouTube content, you must enable ad tracking and audience measurement. OK Manage my options One of your browser extensions appears to be blocking the video player from loading. To view this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Try again Cover image: © France 24 The youngest White House press secretary, Leavitt joined Trump’s 2024 campaign and served as a transition spokesperson before Trump tapped her as White House press secretary. She was the youngest person ever appointed to the position. “Few could or ever will compare to Karoline,” said Harrison Fields, Trump’s former principal deputy press secretary. “She is someone who not only spoke fluently about Trump, but knew how to feed the media beast in a clever, bold and successful way that, most importantly, appealed to her audience: the president.” In their year and a half in office, Leavitt and White House communications director Steven Cheung transformed the administration’s stance toward the media in ways that some of Trump’s allies applauded and press freedom advocates criticized. The Trump administration has begun carefully selecting which journalists will have access to the president, scrapping the long-standing system established by the independent White House Correspondents Association. The “press pool” was traditionally a rotation chosen by the industry group to ensure that the media had uniform access to the president and could broadcast his activities to the public and other journalists who could not attend smaller meetings. Read moreThe US Senate narrowly confirms Trump loyalist Todd Blanche as attorney general. As part of that process, the Trump administration’s press office created a special “new media” seat in the briefing room that gave podcasts, newsletters and nascent digital media a more prominent role in coverage of the presidency. Some press advocates praised the move as a recognition of the changing media landscape. Others criticized it as a lever the administration could use to reward media outlets whose coverage it deemed favorable. Leavitt leaves the White House as administration officials face reports from the Washington Post this week that Trump used a plane carrying Cabinet officials, staff and journalists as a decoy as he departed a NATO summit in Turkey in July. The Secret Service smuggled the president from one plane to another in the back of a catering truck, the newspaper reported, as Trump faced a possible assassination threat from Iran. Reporters and staff on the original plane were unaware of Trump’s movements, a significant departure from precedent. (FRANCE 24 with Reuters)
