(AFP) – She’s the face of a Trump-supporting Gen Z movement and the youngest White House press secretary in history. Now Karoline Leavitt is stepping up to the podium for the first time. The 27-year-old is already a polished presence, with her social media profile mixing shots of life as a young working mother with clips of her on Fox News going after the “fake news” media.
But it has taken more than a week into Donald Trump’s second term for Leavitt to make her debut before the press in the James S. Brady briefing room at the White House. It reflects the difficulties that Trump’s spokespeople face to emerge out of the shadow of their limelight-loving boss, with the president already having had several long interactions with the media since returning to power. “See you at the podium!” Leavitt said on X ahead of the briefing. Trump said when he appointed her shortly after his election win in November that Leavitt was “smart, tough” and would “excel at the podium.”
Leavitt is nothing if not a Trump loyalist. Raised in New Hampshire, where her family ran an ice cream shop, she sent a letter to her university newspaper in 2017 to protest against the fact that a professor had criticized Trump in class. Eight years later she has had a meteoric rise through the ranks of Trumpworld, thanks partly to her aggressive defense of her 78-year-old boss on the airwaves. A veteran of the press office in his first term, she unsuccessfully ran for a seat in Congress in New Hampshire in 2022 on a pro-Trump, pro-gun ownership platform. An Instagram post at the time showed her firing a machine gun on a range with the caption: “@joebiden come and take it.”
Then her steely appearances on television as Trump’s 2024 campaign spokeswoman earned her the job as press secretary. In one notable exchange, a CNN interviewer cut Leavitt off after she criticized the network’s moderators chosen to oversee a debate between Trump and then-president Joe Biden. Her loyalty was such that she returned to work four days after the birth of her first child when Trump survived an assassination attempt at a political rally last June. “I looked at my husband and said, ‘Looks like I’m going back to work,” Leavitt told The Conservateur magazine in an article titled “Wonder Woman.”
The White House briefing room will be a different experience, with its rough-and-tumble sparring with journalists. Since Trump returned to power, she has so far only had a brief encounter with reporters on the driveway outside the West Wing, followed by a single “gaggle” on Air Force One as Trump traveled to California. Her television appearances have almost exclusively been reserved for Fox News and the conservative Newsmax channel.
But she has still caused a stir, with conservative commentator Mary Rooke posting a picture of her driveway appearance with two similarly coiffed aides and saying: “We are finally entering our Blonde Supremacy era.” As she steps up to the podium on Tuesday, Leavitt will be seeking to avoid the fate of Trump’s previous spokespeople. His first, Sean Spicer, was widely ridiculed after falsely insisting during his first briefing that the crowd for Trump’s 2017 inauguration was the largest in history. Three other spokespeople followed during the first term with one of them, Stephanie Grisham, failing to make a single appearance at the podium.
– Danny KEMP
© 2024 AFP
