Trump loses his "machine gun" for the media

Caroline Leavitt, one of the most recognizable figures in Donald Trump's communications team, will leave her position as White House spokeswoman at the end of August, after 19 months during which she became a key voice in the presidential administration and significantly changed the way the White House communicates with the media and the public on social media, the Financial Times reports.

As the British newspaper reports, her combative tenure lasted longer than that of almost all of her predecessors, and more than 53 times longer than the 11 days that Anthony Scaramucci spent as White House communications director.

Leavitt was the first member of Generation Z to hold the position, and she represented her much older boss much more effectively than her predecessors, according to the FT. She deflected questions from reporters, questioned their motives and won praise from the president, who described her style as “lips like a machine gun.”

During her 19 months at the rostrum, she also turned the famous White House briefing room into a kind of viral video factory for social media.

Leavitt, who announced Wednesday that she would be leaving at the end of August, became the youngest White House press secretary in history when she took office in January 2025 at the age of 27.

The former congressional candidate and member of Trump's campaign staff presented herself as a voice of "common sense" and a fighter for the American middle class who believe in God and support Trump. According to the FT, she sometimes presented penetrating journalistic questions as almost a personal attack.

When an Associated Press reporter pointed out in April 2025 that tariffs are paid by importers, not foreign companies, and asked if she had ever paid tariffs, she replied:

"I think it's insulting that you're trying to test my knowledge of economics and the decisions this president has made."

In a discussion about the wrongful deportation of Kilmarn Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, Leavitt mocked the media for portraying him as, as she put it, a "candidate for father of the year."

The White House regularly extracted such harsh responses into short videos and posted them online, where they were met with great approval from supporters of the MAGA movement, the Financial Times recalls.

Trump pleased with her performances

Leavitt's confident performances delighted Trump and allowed her to survive as his chief spokeswoman in a position that had exhausted Scaramucci and four White House spokespeople during his first term.

The FT recalls that Scaramucci's tenure, which was less than two weeks, ended after a telephone conversation with a New Yorker journalist, during which he used numerous profanities.

Sean Spicer lasted six months, but got into trouble on the first day by claiming that more people attended Trump's inauguration than any previous one, despite photos showing otherwise.

During the Jewish holiday of Passover, he also said that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was worse than Hitler because Hitler, he said, did not use chemical weapons. Spicer was later ridiculed for allegations that he hid from reporters in the bushes around the White House.

His immediate successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has held the position longer than Leavitt. However, as the FT reminds us, she has also significantly reduced the number of press briefings. In one of the more notable responses, she defended the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant families, saying that it is "very biblical to enforce the law."

Stephanie Grisham was the press secretary for nine months and did not hold a single briefing during that time, but later wrote a book about her work in the White House.

Kayleigh McEnany arrived at the start of the 2020 pandemic, with a Harvard law degree and a promise never to lie to reporters. By November of that year, Fox News was cutting her off when she claimed that illegal votes were being inserted into the election. She later became a Fox host.

Changed the White House's relationship with the media

Leavitt, the FT estimates, has outdone them all. Her departure leaves Trump and his advisers, including communications director Stephen Chung, who rarely appears in the media, facing the difficult task of finding a successor for one of the most visible positions in the White House.

Leavitt also changed the composition of journalists attending the briefings, giving one of the requested seats in the room to a rotating group of representatives of the “new media.” Among them were online media outlets like Semafor, right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec, and podcaster Tim Poole, known for promoting conspiracy theories.

She also organized "influencer briefings," where she answered questions from, or agreed with, content creators who support mass deportations and bans on transgender athletes, as well as a friend of Trump's son, Barron.

The FT also says that Leavitt accused media outlets that did not accept the Trump administration's decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America of spreading falsehoods. The Associated Press was eventually expelled from the group of journalists covering the president for refusing to use the new name.

However, Leavitt, who boasted of representing "the most transparent and accessible president in American history," occasionally found herself in uncomfortable situations precisely because of Trump's accessibility.

In one example from April, she called reports that Trump was considering a 90-day pause in the implementation of a broad package of tariffs “fake news.” Just two days later, Trump announced just such a pause. Leavitt then argued that the media clearly did not understand Trump’s book The Art of the Deal.

Her most important audience was Trump.

Despite such mistakes, Leavitt, according to the FT, was extremely successful in the part of her job that was most important for her survival - satisfying the audience of one man, Donald Trump.

When asked in November why Bloomberg's president, journalist Katherine Lucy, told him "shut up, you pig" while questioning him about documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, Leavitt replied:

"He calls out fake news when he sees it and gets frustrated by journalists who spread false information."

Trump appreciated such an unreserved defense. The British newspaper recalls that last year he told reporters that he did not think "any president has ever had a better spokeswoman than Caroline."