Who is 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt, White House's youngest press secretary?

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday named his “highly effective communicator” and campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, as his White House press secretary.

“Leavitt is smart, tough, and 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,” Trump said in a statement announcing her appointment.

The news concluded a hectic week of Cabinet announcements, which included
controversial selections for the positions of director of national intelligence, defence secretary, and health and human services.

A press secretary does not need Senate confirmation.

Here’s all we know about her.

Who is Karoline Leavitt?

At 27, Karoline Leavitt is the youngest White House press secretary, surpassing the previous record set by Ron Ziegler, who was 29 when President Richard Nixon appointed him in 1969.

From being an assistant press secretary during Trump’s first term as president to being appointed as one during his second, her appointment completes a full cycle.

The New Hampshire native attended Saint Anselm College, a Catholic university in her home state, where she majored in political science and communications.

Leavitt began her rise through the Republican party ranks after Trump and other contenders for the 2016 presidential nomination visited her university campus in Manchester, New Hampshire, for a primary debate that was broadcast by Fox News.

“As one of the lone conservatives on campus, they appointed me to be an assistant running around that week for Fox News. I was just running around backstage and that’s when I decided what I wanted to do with my career,” she said on the network’s The Untold Story podcast.

In 2020, she told Politico that these experiences gave her her “first glimpse into the world of press” and led to her decision to pursue a career in press relations.

After that, she wrote a column for Saint Anselm College’s student newspaper titled Why Donald Trump just keeps on winning and the media doesn’t get it, in which she criticised the “identity politics” that many of her classmates advocated.

“I didn’t believe … that the colour of your skin or your gender can hold you back in this country. I don’t believe that’s true. That’s the foundation of my conservative beliefs,” she told the podcast.

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Her meteoric rise

According to the website for her 2022 run for Congress, she began working for the first Trump White House shortly after graduating in 2019, first as a presidential writer and later as an assistant press secretary.

“I helped prepare Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for high-pressure briefings (and) fought against the biased mainstream media,” the website stated.

After leaving the White House post Trump’s election defeat in 2020, she ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Representatives, representing New Hampshire during the 2022 midterm elections.

She also worked as a communications director for Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, whom Trump has nominated to be UN ambassador.

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A firm believer in Trump’s ‘America First’

Leavitt has been a regular presence at Trump’s side in 2024, serving as his campaign spokeswoman at his rallies and multiple court appearances.

The mother of one, who took nine days off to give birth to her son during the July campaign, shares Trump’s disdain for established media companies and is a staunch supporter of his “America First” anti-immigrant agenda.

She told a Fox News podcast posted online on Friday that she had spent the campaign “battling a lot of ‘fake news’ reporters. I hate to call them that, but it’s true.” “There are a lot of journalists who aren’t interested in journalism any more and we deal with them every day,” she added.

Leavitt will soon be seen by the public at the famed spot behind the podium in the White House briefing room, which was the scene of numerous heated press conferences between Trump’s initial administration officials and members of the press.

Asked what was different about Trump as he prepares to take office again, she said he was more experienced in politics.

“I think he is more wise about the ‘deep state,’ the establishment in Washington DC and the lengths to which they were willing to go to derail his campaign and his success,” she said.

With inputs from agencies