Karoline Leavitt may go down as the best White House press secretary this country has ever had. Her exit last month stung, but now that she’s no longer behind the podium, she’s dishing about what happened behind the scenes, and what she revealed on Tuesday is a doozy.
Appearing on Sean Hannity's podcast, Leavitt pulled back the curtain on the briefing room and revealed how much of what happens during White House daily press briefings is just for show. According to Leavitt, reporters who hit her with loaded questions on camera would later come to her privately and apologize once the cameras stopped rolling.
“You name people that act one way when they're questioning you,” Hannity began. “They want their moment, right? They want their clip for the night so they get their time on the evening news.”
“Exactly,” Leavitt confirmed.
“And then off air they're totally different people. Do you find that a lot?”
“Yeah, that's true.”
“Would you say they're phony?” Hannity asked.
“Yeah, there's a performative aspect to the briefing room, in fairness, I think on both sides, right, but definitely with the press. And they have to do that because their bosses are demanding it. There's been times reporters have even said to me, ‘I'm sorry, I had to ask that today, you know, my bosses really wanted me to ask that.’ They know it's an unfair question, but they're not in control of their own livelihood. They are dictated by the editors and the execs at some of these companies.”
Leavitt's comments come amid the fight over President Donald Trump's decision to pull White House press credentials from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. The three outlets have sued Trump to get their passes back, and other networks have essentially boycotted pool coverage of Trump in solidarity.
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Naturally, the left and its media allies are treating the credential decision as an assault on the First Amendment. That's a cute argument, but the Constitution says nothing about a guaranteed seat in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room or a hard pass to roam the West Wing. CNN can still cover the White House. MS NOW can still spend hours a day ranting like unhinged lunatics about Trump. Politico can still publish all the anonymous-source gossip it wants. Nobody has stopped a single story from running.
In fact, our republic has survived.
Leavitt also pointed to CBS News, where coverage shifted after Bari Weiss took over as editor-in-chief.
"You know, we're seeing big changes at CBS, which I think are great. I think we've seen a lot of improvement with them, and again, we're not asking for, like, positive puff pieces every day. Just fairness. Truth. Accuracy," she said.
"Writing about an executive order that the president of the United States signed should not be a questionable thing... it should just be, 'Yeah, of course I'll write about this,'" Leavitt said.
Karoline Leavitt is revealing what White House reporters told her once the cameras stopped rolling. The former press secretary says journalists privately apologized for asking “unfair” questions and admitted some of their briefing room confrontations were “performative.” https://t.co/k1ODQHIvos
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 23, 2026
And that's a pretty darn low bar, and plenty of newsrooms still manage to trip over it.
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