Who is Karoline Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary ever?

Karoline Leavitt has become the youngest White House press secretary in history.

The 27-year-old, who served as Donald Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, could make her debut within hours.

The first briefing of a new administration is a huge moment as the press secretary comes face to face with the media.

Trump’s first press secretary in his first term, Sean Spicer, caused controversy in his debut briefing by inflating estimates of the crowd size at the inauguration and stating that the White House can sometimes “disagree with the facts”.

Trump announced Leavitt as his pick in November, saying he was confident the one-time congressional candidate — who also served in the White House press office during the first Trump administration — would “excel at the podium and help deliver our message to the American People as we Make America Great Again”.

“Karoline is smart, tough and has proven to be a highly effective communicator,” Trump said.

A New Hampshire native, Leavitt studied communications and political science at Saint Anselm College, a Catholic college in her home state.

While still in school, she worked at Fox News and in Trump’s White House press office. She told Politico in 2020 that she got her “first glimpse into the world of the press” through these experiences. They led to her decision to pursue a career in press relations, she said.

Leavitt began working for the first Trump White House shortly after graduating in 2019, first as the president’s speechwriter and later as an assistant press secretary, according to the website for her 2022 congressional bid.

“I helped prepare press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for high-pressure briefings (and) fought against the biased mainstream media,” her website states.

After leaving the White House, Leavitt served as communications director for Elise Stefanik, a senior Republican congresswoman whom President-elect Trump has nominated to serve as ambassador to the United Nations.

Leavitt left that role to run for Congress and won the Republican nomination for New Hampshire’s first congressional district in 2022, only to lose in the general election to Democrat Chris Pappas.

The policy positions she listed on her campaign website broadly align with many of Trump’s priorities. On the economy, she pledged to “Cut taxes” and “champion pro-growth, free market policies”.

She presented herself as a strong supporter of law enforcement and strong borders, including “ZERO tolerance for illegal immigration” and said she would work to ensure the completion of the border wall.

In January 2024, she joined Trump’s third bid for the US presidency as his campaign press secretary.

Now she has been chosen to serve as the youngest White House press secretary in US history. Ron Ziegler was the previous record holder. In 1969, he was appointed to the position by Richard Nixon when he was 29.

The public will soon see Leavitt in the iconic spot behind the podium in the White House briefing room — a room that led to countless tense exchanges between members of the press and officials in Trump’s first administration.

Trump ran through several press secretaries during his first four-year term, including Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany.

After leaving the White House, Sanders went on to win the Arkansas governor’s race.

Grisham resigned after the Capitol uprising on January 6, 2021 and has become a Trump critic. McEnany continues to advocate for the president-elect as a Fox News personality.

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