This is a story that will surprise no one: President Donald Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the youngest press secretary in U.S. history at just 27, has been a MAGA groupie and sycophant of Trump’s since she was a teenager.
The online website The List recently unearthed an archived video of Leavitt at a “Pancakes and Politics” town hall in 2016, when she was an 18-year-old freshman at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Before she even got to her question at the event, she heaped praise on then-candidate Trump.
“Mr. Trump, as everyone knows and as I personally appreciate, you’re very honest and outspoken about a lot of different things,” Leavitt gushed. “As my father would say, you call a spade a spade, however many people criticize you for this saying you’re merciless, ruthless, cold-hearted,” she continued.
“What would you like to say to people who think you’re too harsh to be the next president of the United States?”
Trump gushed back at Leavitt. “It’s such a great question, and I had a woman the other day say, ‘Mr. Trump, I love you. I’m voting for you, but are you a nice enough person to be President?’ I said, ‘You know what, I really am a nice person. I give tremendous amounts of money away. I love to help people. I love people.’ And you see from upstairs how many people showed up to see me. It’s not going to be this time about niceness. It’s going to be about competence,” Trump replied.
Also, while attending St. Anselm, Leavitt penned a piece for “The St. Anselm Crier” praising Trump while dissing left-leaning media outlets, according to The List.
“Say what you want about Donald Trump. He is certainly not perfect, but he is without question running against not only a crooked candidate but the crooked and biased media as well,” Leavitt wrote, referring to former Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “The liberal media is unjust, unfair, and sometimes just plain old false.”
These words would become something the older Leavitt would repeat over and over, and now from behind the podium in the White House briefing room.
In fact, it was Trump who inspired a young Leavitt to enter politics in the first place.
The MAGA Republican ran for office at 23 in New Hampshire’s first Congressional District, just a few years after graduating from St. Anselm. As one of the first Gen Z congressional candidates, she lost that election amid a crowded field of more veteran politicians.
She was actually an old hand at the White House before she even embarked on that congressional campaign. She had turned an internship in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building mailroom during Trump’s first term into a stint as assistant press secretary. In that role, according to Politico, Leavitt said she fought “against the biased mainstream media.”
In 2020, after Trump lost re-election, she worked as communications director for New York Rep. Elise Stefanik.
And now she’s putting all that experience and long admiration of Trump to work as the face of the White House.
