There is a moment every press secretary dreams of: the room full of skeptical reporters, the cameras rolling, the question that was clearly designed to trap them. And then there is Karoline Leavitt, who spent the past two years making that moment look like a warm-up act. On Wednesday, President Trump announced that Leavitt, 28, will step down as White House press secretary at the end of the month “so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family.” The press corps should be relieved. Instead, they’re reportedly devastated. They’ve lost their favorite sparring partner, and nobody fights like that for free.
Think about what Leavitt accomplished. She was the youngest press secretary in the history of the White House — a 28-year-old who walked into the briefing room and did what generations of press secretaries could not: she made the press corps explain itself. She asked reporters to define their terms. She declined to repeat their premises. She treated their gotcha questions with the same enthusiasm a cat treats a bath. It was glorious, and the media will miss every second of it.
The timing is, as always, impeccable. She returns from maternity leave less than a month ago, fresh from proving that a working mother can dominate the most hostile press room on Earth, and now she is leaving to spend time with the beautiful young children her boss so memorably described. The left will spin this as chaos, turnover, dysfunction. I prefer to see it for what it is: a young woman who stared down the entire Washington press establishment for two years and walked away on her own terms, at the top of her game, with a family that wanted her back.
Who will replace her? The White House will find somebody. But the briefing room will be a sadder, quieter, and considerably less entertaining place. Without Leavitt, reporters will have to go back to grilling press secretaries who actually answer questions, and frankly, they don’t have the stamina for it. They’ve been spoiled. For two years, they had the best opponent in Washington — someone who never once apologized for the President, never once conceded a premise, and never once gave them the sound bite they were fishing for. That is not a press secretary. That’s an artist.
Some will say the departure is a sign of trouble. Nonsense. The briefing room is a battlefield, and Leavitt is retiring from combat with her record intact and her family waiting at home. The press corps, meanwhile, is left to do what it does best: mourn the person who made them look foolish, and pretend they never enjoyed the show.
At press time, the White House Correspondents’ Association was reportedly preparing a farewell gift: a framed transcript of Leavitt’s finest takedown, mounted next to a plaque reading “we’ll miss you more than we’ll ever admit.”