She’s leaving the podium, but not the conversation.
In her final sit-down as White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt let slip Thursday that she’s been quietly counseling President Trump on who should replace her.
“Of course, we’ve spoken about it,” she told “Fox & Friends,” with the easy candor of someone who’s earned the right to speak plainly.
The line of applicants, she said, is long.
“There is no shortage of applications. There’s a lot of people who want this job, a lot of capable people who want this job.”
Leavitt wouldn’t name names. She didn’t need to. Instead, she offered a kind of job description drawn from experience: whoever gets the nod has to have Trump’s total trust.
“It has to be someone he trusts fully,” she said, “and I know he’ll make the right decision at the right time, and I’ll be here to help him if he continues to want me to do so.”
That’s the real story here — not the mechanics of a staffing decision, but a young press secretary who spent nearly twenty months absorbing the hardest job in Washington and came out the other side still wanting to help. She called her exit “bittersweet,” and the word fits. She’s leaving to spend more time with her two small children, but she’s leaving in full sentences, without bitterness, without a grudge to settle.
“It’s bitter because I’m leaving a job that I love so very much,” she said, “and it’s been the honor and blessing of a lifetime to work for this president… There will never be another like him.” She described Trump as more than a boss — a friend who understood why she needed to go.
There’s something almost old-fashioned about that kind of loyalty on the way out the door.
Washington doesn’t always reward it.
Leavitt gave it anyway.
