White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s departure at month’s end is the result of a combination of factors, both “personal” and “institutional.”
On The Daily Beast Podcast, Joanna Coles and Hugh Dougherty dissected Leavitt’s AI-altered announcement this week that she would be leaving to focus on her family. Leavitt, 28, has two children—Niko, born in 2024, and Viviana, born this May—with 60-year-old real estate developer Nicolas Riccio. But there are other factors at play, Coles and Dougherty said.
Coles began by citing details shared with the Daily Beast on Sunday by first-term Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
“He said it’s widely known among Trump’s aides that Trump is just meaner. You can see it. He’s more unpleasant to deal with. He yells at people. He’s always yelled at people, but he’s yelling louder and for longer,” Coles said.
“And I’m sure Karoline Leavitt, who you know, by all appearances, has a nice marriage, has a husband who’s wealthy enough that she doesn’t need to work, thought, ‘What am I doing with my life? I have these two adorable little babies at home. Why do I need to come to work and get shouted at when I could go to Fox, make more money and be just as famous?’”
One prior Trump administration press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, is a Fox host. The network also brought on former Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as a contributor for a while after she left the White House. Dana Perino, who served as press secretary in the George W. Bush administration, is also a Fox host.
Dougherty added that, regarding the “personal” reasons for Leavitt’s exit, there’s “no doubt” that she “was not enjoying herself.”
In addition to Leavitt not accompanying Trump, 80, to Turkey when she returned from maternity leave, he said, “it felt like there was a notable diminution of interest, that there was just less of the energy from her.”
The president’s phone calls to her while she was away must have weighed on her, he added.
“What was quite clear was that behind the scenes, she had been repeatedly phoned by Trump during that month that she was off, and... the load did not get any lighter for her. When she came back, it got worse.”
As for the “institutional” motivations to leave the West Wing, the midterms are looming large—and all the consequences for the Trump White House that that could bring if Democrats indeed retake the House, let alone the Senate.
“If the polls are right, it’s going to be a blue wave that’s going to be so unpleasant if you are in the West Wing, if you are Karoline Leavitt, if you are the other people who are leaving that we want to talk about as well, you don’t want to be there,” Dougherty said, referring to the exits this month of Deputy National Security Adviser Andy Baker and Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson. More are expected, Politico reported.
“First of all, he’s probably going to be throwing things, and there’s a lot of gold that can come off those walls,” Dougherty said. “The internal atmosphere of a West Wing where there has been a defeat, obviously, is unpleasant.”
With Democratic control of Congress, “you are bombarded as a West Wing employee by subpoena after subpoena after subpoena. You are told to go and give evidence. You spend your time with lawyers. It’s not very rewarding.”
“And if you’re Karoline Leavitt, all the questions coming out are about those investigations,” Dougherty added. “And just think about what the Democrats want to investigate. They want to investigate Epstein. They’ve even talked about investigating Barron Trump’s links to those [Tate] brothers, they want to investigate the grift... Do you want to be the person up there answering those questions? So, there’s the personal and there is this wide institutional problem that those who are in the West Wing are facing. And that’s why Karoline Leavitt is not alone in leaving.”
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, who has insulted Coles before, did so again, saying, “Joanna Coles is a r----d who has no idea what goes on in the White House.”
New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday on YouTube, and on other podcast platforms the next morning. Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform at beast.pub/dailybeastpod and subscribe on YouTube to watch full episodes.
