When presidents leave the White House, they tend to remain in the public eye and imagination. But their press secretaries can simply vanish. When Karoline Leavitt was appointed as Donald Trump’s press secretary in January, she immediately made waves by becoming, at just 27, the youngest person ever appointed to that role, which she immediately began to perform with a steely, smiling brio that has made her a revered figure among the Maga fan base.
On Tuesday, Leavitt generated headlines when she decided to post a copy of a private text conversation with a senior Huffington Post journalist whom, she said, had it in for Trump and demanded that he “stop texting me with your disingenuous, biased and bulls**t questions”.
As it happened, Leavitt’s outburst deflected from competing headlines generated by her immediate predecessor, Karine Jean-Pierre.
The sudden return of Jean-Pierre, after a pronounced silence, was a reminder of how the day-to-day reality of the White House briefing room has changed beyond recognition. Jean-Pierre spent the critical months of last summer’s doomed re-election campaign defending and explaining president Joe Biden’s declining performance and poll numbers with an exasperated and weary patience.
The atmosphere in this year’
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