Last November, Donald Trump appointed the youngest ever White House press secretary in US history. Two months later, at just 27, Karoline Leavitt delivered her first press briefing, promising to keep an open channel with news media and allow podcasters, content creators and social media influencers into the briefing room.
The devout Catholic had worked for years to get Trump back into the White House. She began her working relationship with the president as an assistant press secretary for him during his first term between 2017 and 2021.
Trump had four press secretaries in his first term, three of them women, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany.
In appointing Leavitt, Trump described her as “smart” and “tough”.
“Karoline…has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again.”
Education
Leavitt was born in 1997 and raised in the small town of Atkinson in New Hampshire. As a student, Leavitt was a star athlete, attending a liberal arts school in her state on a softball scholarship, where she excelled as outfielder. She was also known as a “smart” student, making the dean’s list and honor roll as a freshman and sophomore.
Graduating in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in politics and communication, Leavitt “quickly learned it wasn’t athletics I was interested in. It was politics, public service, news,” she told a county Republican group in New Hampshire in 2022.
At the time, she was considering running for Congress. She had aspirations to become a reporter. During her college years at Saint Anselm, she founded the college’s first-ever student-run broadcasting club, which covered college news and local sports.
She went on to work for local TV station WMUR, before realising she was “glad I didn’t continue down that path, working on the dark side.”
Politics began to pull at her.
Political trajectory
During Trump’s first term, Leavitt applied for a White House internship to work in the correspondence office and was “stunned” when she was accepted.
Her job consisted of writing letters in the president’s name. Later, she approached the fourth and final press secretary of Trump’s term, Kayleigh McEnany and asked for a job in the press office.
“I was immediately impressed by her evident drive and her genuinely positive demeanor,” McEnany said in an email to AP. “Karoline is sharp, professional, and enterprising, and I knew that I wanted to hire her on the spot.”
Leavitt was eventually given the role of assistant press secretary.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Leavitt went to work as a communications director for Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York. Last November, Trump nominated Stefanik to be the US ambassador to the United Nations.
In 2022, at the age of 25, Leavitt left Stefanik’s office to run for office herself, campaigning for stronger parental rights in schools and increased domestic energy production. She won the Republican primary for a US House seat from New Hampshire, but ultimately lost in the general election to Democrat Chris Pappas.
During Trump’s campaign to return to the White House, Leavitt worked as his national spokesperson, accompanying him across the US and aggressively defending his policies.
Personal life
Two days before Trump’s second inauguration in January, Leavitt married real estate developer Nicholas Riccio, who is 59.
The couple met in 2022 while she was running for a Congress seat in New Hampshire.
“A mutual friend of ours hosted an event at a restaurant that he owns up in New Hampshire and invited my husband,” she revealed on The Megyn Kelly Show in February. “I was speaking. We met and we were acquainted as friends.”
Their 32-year age gap has been a source of gossip, which she recently addressed. Leavitt admitted that at first, she was wary about their age gap, saying “I mean it’s a very atypical love story,” but said Riccio is “incredible.”
“He’s the father of my child and he’s the best dad I could ever ask for,” Leavitt told People. “And he is so supportive, especially during a very chaotic period of life… I say, ‘I walked into your life and it’s been a circus ever since,’ but God bless him because he’s fully on board.”
Leavitt gave birth to her first child, a son, on July 10 last year. Three days later, Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. Leavitt returned to work immediately, claiming to be motivated by her professional responsibilities to forgo maternity leave.
“I looked at my husband and said, ‘Looks like I’m going back to work,’ ” she told The Conservateur in an interview last October.
She’s the sixth working mother in a row to hold the position; former working mothers include Kayleigh McEnany and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Earlier this week, Leavitt arrived at the traditional White House Easter Egg Roll event with her husband and their nine-month-old so, Niko.
She has spoken publicly about her Catholic faith, saying that it is a “huge part” of her life and that “My faith, my marriage, my family life — it’s everything to me.”
Image credit: Shutterstock
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