Trump's 'Gen Z' press secretary makes podium debut

President Donald Trump named her as the youngest White House press secretary in history. And Karoline Leavitt unveiled a Gen Z-style shake up as she made her debut at the famed podium on Tuesday. The 27-year-old immediately announced that she was opening up the briefing room to TikTokers and creating a seat for “new media,” echoing her boss’s wider overhaul of the US government. After Trump focused on podcasters in his election victory and bashed “legacy” news organizations, Leavitt said she would be following his “revolutionary media approach.” But some things don’t change.

Leavitt admitted that the garrulous former reality TV star Trump will end up taking much of the limelight himself. “The president is the best spokesperson that this White House has,” Leavitt said in her first briefing since Trump’s inauguration eight days ago. “And I can assure you that you will be hearing from both him and me as much as possible.” As reporters’ hands shot up, Leavitt then took questions, starting with two of the so-called new media, Axios and Breitbart, before mixing up traditional news organizations with right-wing outlets.

Leavitt was 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.

Trump said when he appointed her shortly after his election win in November that Leavitt was “smart, tough” and would “excel at the podium.” And 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 machinegun on a range with the caption: “@joebiden come and take it”, referring to then-president Joe Biden.

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 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.” It remains to be seen how often Leavitt will step up to the podium in future. Before the briefing she had only had a brief encounter with reporters on the White House driveway and a single “gaggle” on Air Force One, reserving most of her appearances for Fox News.

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.” Her first briefing showed a practised performer who was mostly comfortable exchanging jabs with the media.

Unlike her predecessor, Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, she made no use of the heavy “binder” where spokespeople often have key lines set out.

She also avoided the fate of Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, who was widely ridiculed after falsely insisting during his first briefing that the crowd for Trump’s 2017 inauguration was the largest history. Three other spokespeople followed during Trump’s first term with one of them, Stephanie Grisham, failing to make a single appearance at the podium.

Danny Kemp, Agence France-Presse