Ex-Daily Caller Editor Begs Karoline Leavitt to Stop ‘Bile-Inducing’ Briefings With MAGA Influencers
“Call your mom” – that was ex-Daily Caller editor-in-chief Geoffrey Ingersoll’s advice to a TikTok personality who used his rare shot in the White House Briefing Room to ask Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for parenting tips.
In a blistering piece for The Spectator published Thursday, Ingersoll unloaded on the Trump White House’s decision to flood the briefing room with pro-Trump influencers and MAGA-aligned podcasters as “increasingly bile-inducing.”
Leavitt’s “new media” brigade has received widespread derision for lobbing fawning, softball questions and using the White House stage to amplify their own MAGA-aligned narratives.
Ingersoll let rip with a direct appeal to the press secretary herself: “Karoline Leavitt, for the love of your movement, stop bringing podcasters and influencers into the White House briefings.”
Continuing, Ingersoll torched a series of softball, fawning questions posed by so-called “new media” figures, from asking about Leavitt’s “beautiful baby boy” to whether Trump has been “working out with RFK.”
Ingersoll didn’t spare names either. TikTok’s Link Lauren, better known as “MAGA Malfoy,” was lampooned for rambling through a full minute of gushing praise before even arriving at a question. The writer also blasted another influencer from LindellTV, who asked if the White House would release Trump’s “fitness plan.”
It was a question by “X personality” Dom Lucre, however, that truly broke Ingersoll. Lucre floated whether the administration might investigate Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama – a question that Ingersoll complained took the conversation “back 10 years.”
“That,” he wrote, “was the moment I’d finally heard enough.”
While Ingersoll acknowledged the benefits of breaking legacy media’s monopoly on the front row, he argued the current crop of MAGA media figures are “failing to clear” even the lowest bar—and damaging both conservative credibility and Trump’s own media image.
“Compliments don’t go viral. Glazings don’t draw eyeballs. Conflict does,” he wrote. “If Trump knows anything, it’s what draws the best ratings. This ain’t it.”
Ingersoll pointed out how Trump gave his 100-day interviews with adversarial outlets, TIME and ABC News – “with whom he just settled a lawsuit.”
“If you actually care about the state of our media today, some gatekeeping is in order,” he warned Leavitt. “No more influencers.”
