As a college student, Karoline Leavitt was laser-focused on getting where she wanted to be today: serving in the Trump administration as the youngest-ever White House press secretary.
While many of her fellow students were partying, Leavitt, 27, spent her college days attending “every political event possible” in service of that goal.
Today, the Gen Z Republican from New Hampshire will make her briefing room debut after a week of shunning the traditional daily showdown with reporters.
Leavitt is the fifth press secretary to join the Trump Hall of Fame. During his first administration, he went through four of them in four years: Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, and Kayleigh McEnany.
Leavitt’s road to the White House began a mere eight years ago as a student at the conservative Saint Anselm College, when she interned at Fox News during the 2016 New Hampshire primary.
She was pictured beaming next to Tucker Carlson during the internship.
“The NH Primary is how my love for politics and media originated,” Leavitt wrote on Instagram. “From that week on, I knew what I wanted to do for my career.”
Her loyalty to Trump has been unwavering ever since.
Toward the end of Trump’s first term, Leavitt learned the ropes of the White House press gig when she joined former press secretary McEnany’s team.
When Trump left office, Leavitt worked for New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, before she ran for Congress in her home state.
That same year, Leavitt posted a video of herself at the shooting range captioned: “take it @joebiden” as she fired.
After losing to her Democratic rival, Leavitt was welcomed back on the Trump team and eventually named his campaign spokeswoman.
Leavitt is leading the charge of what she’s characterized as a Gen Z–Trump movement. “I believe there is going to be a reawakening amongst Gen Z in short time [sic],” she commented to a follower in 2023. “The pendulum has recently swung so far to the left, it’s bound to come back, and it’s going to be great.”
Trump’s new press secretary is also a wife and mother. She said she went back to work “just days” after giving birth to her son, born in July 2024.
When asked about the demands of the job and missing out on moments with her child, Leavitt said at the end of last year that she “prays about it every day.”
“It’s very difficult but it’s also all I know,” she told Instagram followers. “I went back to work just days after giving birth…I remind myself this job is temporary, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”
She gushed about Trump as a boss. “He’s the best. He is generous, a great listener and storyteller, and seriously one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. I am honored to work for him.” And she previously said that Trump reminds her of her own father, who “came from nothing and worked his way up.”
But the president has admitted he hardly “came from nothing.” “I started off in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of $1m...” he told NBC’s Today on the campaign trail in 2015.
The kind of press secretary Leavitt plans to be remains to be seen.
So far, apart from several appearances with conservative news channels, she has sat back as Trump takes center stage.
“The American people are hearing directly from the leader of the free world,” she said last week. “This is the type of truth and transparency that they deserve.”
She has promised to usher in “decorum” in the press room, the site of many clashes between the press and spokespeople during Trump’s first term.
Only time will tell whether she will succeed or not.
