Karoline Leavitt did something this week that ought to be perfectly understandable. The 28-year-old White House press secretary, who gave birth to her second child in May, announced she would leave the job at the end of August to spend more time with her family. From Reuters:
In a social media post, Leavitt, 28, said she aimed to spend more time with her young children. She gave birth to a daughter, her second child, in May and recently returned from maternity leave.
"Karoline has been a real leader in the White House, and has done a phenomenal job fighting for Justice, Liberty, and Freedom, since 2018, including our Historic Re-Election Campaign of 2024," Trump said in a social media post, calling Leavitt "one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office."
Leavitt called her role at the White House "the honor and adventure of a lifetime."
YOUNGEST WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
Leavitt joined Trump's 2024 campaign and served as transition spokeswoman before Trump selected her to be White House press secretary. She was the youngest person to be appointed to the role.
Few could or will ever compare to Karoline," said Harrison Fields, Trump's former principal deputy press secretary. "She's someone who not only spoke Trump fluently, she knew how to feed the media beast in a cunning, audacious, and successful way that, most importantly, played to her audience: the president."
In her year and a half on the job, Leavitt and White House communications director Steven Cheung transformed the administration's posture toward the media — in ways that some of Trump's allies cheered and free press advocates criticized.
President Donald Trump praised her, and Leavitt called serving in the White House the honor and adventure of a lifetime.
Her critics mostly left motherhood alone.
How gracious.
Then came the professional autopsy.
One column declared Leavitt "knew exactly what she was doing," and portrayed her as the embodiment of a presidency with little regard for truth or transparency.
Karoline Leavitt, the outgoing White House press secretary, is the embodiment of a presidency unleashed, with little regard for truth or transparency.
Consider: In her first briefing as White House press secretary, Leavitt defended the Trump administration’s freeze on federal grants by pointing to a particular line item as “preposterous” — $50 million to fund condoms in Gaza. When I queried Leavitt about the source of her statistic, she responded by sending a Fox News article that initially just quoted her own statement. When I looked into the sum, I found that the U.S. Agency for International Development had spent $119 million over six years to buy condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, making the claim implausible. Eventually, it also became clear the administration had mixed up the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with the Gaza province of Mozambique (though even then, none of that money was spent on condoms).
Leavitt never admitted she was wrong. And, despite the fact checks, Trump doubled down — and claimed the figure was $100 million.
Over three decades working in Washington, I have dealt with 20 White House press secretaries, from Dee Dee Myers, the first woman to hold the job, to Leavitt, the youngest person to hold the job and Trump’s fifth press secretary as president.
Another commentary went further. Jen Psaki, host of The Briefing with Jen Psaki and former president Joe Biden's White House press secretary, said Leavitt never understood the job as serving the American people, and accused her of lying for Trump "whenever and wherever she could."
I have plenty of issues with how Leavitt has done this job, but let me say at the outset: That is not one of them. It is really hard to have a baby while serving in a senior White House job; there are, unfortunately, not hundreds or even dozens of examples from the past to model your experience on, including how long to stay.
I was six months pregnant when I returned to the White House to serve as President Barack Obama’s communications director. My kids were 2 and 5 when I went to work for President Joe Biden as his press secretary. And that’s a big part of why I stayed in that job for only 15 months. So in my opinion, that’s not where criticism of Leavitt should focus.
There are, however, plenty of other things that need to be said about her tenure and about the damage I believe she did to a job I was honored to hold.
For one thing, there is the fundamental question of how she saw the role.
During a press secretary’s first briefing, they typically lay out how they view the job, or they are asked about it. During mine, I talked about what I saw as a “common goal” between the administration and the press, which was “sharing accurate information with the American people.”
I spoke with the president before making those comments, and I put it that way because that is essentially what the job is. Yes, you speak on behalf of the president, but you also deliver, to the best of your ability, accurate information to the American public.
Welcome back to The Referee Test.
Our rule today is the Motive Tax. A reporter can challenge a statement. A fact-checker can compare words with evidence. But when criticism jumps from arguing someone was wrong to declaring she knew, never cared, or lied whenever possible, the referee has stopped calling the play and started climbing inside the player's head.
Where's the evidence for intent?
The accusation gets richer when Psaki delivers it. She used her first White House briefing to promise truth and transparency. Now she remembers her own tenure with enough humility to acknowledge that press secretaries sometimes screw up.
Apparently, that grace expired before reaching the next Republican administration.
Psaki's record includes a 2021 claim that no economist projected Biden's Build Back Better bill would negatively affect inflation. Fact-checkers found numerous economists, including some sympathetic to Biden's agenda, who expected at least some inflationary pressure. Her statement was rated false.
From Politifact:
Psaki said, “No economist out there is projecting that (the Build Back Better bill) will have a negative impact on inflation.”
She’s wrong to say that no economist foresees inflation as a result of the bill’s passage. Numerous economists, including some allies of the White House, have gone on the record saying there probably will be inflationary effects, especially in the near term, if the bill is passed.
However, the broad consensus among analysts has been that the bill’s inflationary impact will be modest and brief.
We rate the statement False.
Was Psaki lying? Did she knowingly deceive the country? Did one false statement prove she never viewed herself as serving Americans?
I don't know.
Neither does anybody who wasn't inside her head.
There's also a reason "Circle Back Psaki" stuck with her critics. Psaki regularly promised to circle back when she didn't have an answer. The phrase attracted ridicule almost immediately. Sometimes, it's exactly what a press secretary should do.
But the woman remembered for circling back is now handing down sweeping judgments about another press secretary's willingness to answer questions.
A little institutional humility might fit behind that desk.
Our second rule is the Context Coupon. Psaki gives herself one. She made mistakes; sometimes she lacked information. Sure, the job was difficult; her errors became ordinary human failures within an honorable effort to inform the public.
Leavitt gets a different coupon book.
Her critics take disputed statements and turn them into evidence of motive, character, and professional corruption. One of these pieces even claims press secretaries in previous administrations tried to remain close to the truth, with the Trump era representing some terrible departure from history.
Please.
White House press secretaries are political advocates whom presidents employ. They defend policy, choose language carefully, dodge questions, emphasize favorable facts, and sometimes say things that collapse under scrutiny.
Political spin wasn't invented on Jan. 20, 2017, and the briefing room wasn't baptized in pure objectivity when Biden took office.
Now apply the Final Symmetry Test.
Imagine Leavitt leaving the White House and declaring that Psaki never cared about serving Americans, knowingly spread Biden's falsehoods, and treated truth as whatever her boss needed it to be.
Would that be presented as sober professional analysis from an experienced former press secretary?
Or would it be called a bitter partisan attack?
We know the answer.
Leavitt's departure deserved an assessment of her record. Instead, parts of the political press used it for one last prosecution of her character while dressing the verdict in the robes of professional standards.
The Referee Test doesn't require anybody to like Karoline Leavitt.
It requires the same whistle for Jen Psaki.
Circle back when that happens.
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