Fox News’s Heinrich Reacts in Real Time to ‘Huge’ And ‘Unexpected’ Karoline Leavitt Exit Announcement

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum brought on senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich on Wednesday to discuss the breaking news that Karoline Leavitt will step down as press secretary to spend more time with her young children.

“Hey, Martha — huge news, and unexpected news, obviously. Karoline just put out an additional post saying that serving as the White House press secretary for the last year and a half has been the honor and adventure of a lifetime,” Heinrich began, adding:

She expresses her gratitude to the president for the privilege of speaking on his behalf at the podium, and talks about how challenging it has been working in one of the most demanding and important jobs while also welcoming two young children in recent years. She’s the youngest press secretary in history — a huge achievement in and of itself — and was a very effective messenger for this administration and for reporters: very accessible, and in the room with the president.

That’s as opposed to under the Biden administration, for example, when we would try to get answers from Karine Jean-Pierre — often it was apparent that she wasn’t as close to the decision-makers and able to give us valuable information the way Karoline has been able to in her time here. So this is going to be a big loss for this White House.

Obviously, others have tried to fill the gap during the time she was on maternity leave — a number of cabinet secretaries delivered a few briefings — but nobody did it as regularly or as effectively as Karoline, being able to answer questions on a variety of topics regardless of the news of the day. So this is going to be a big change here at the White House, and obviously we’re looking into how this role might be filled. In the meantime, she does — and the president’s post seems to indicate this as well — plan to continue playing a support role as an outside advisor. But this is all just breaking in the last few moments, Martha.

“Yeah, absolutely — you make great points. I’m just thinking back to those news conferences: Karine Jean-Pierre would come out with a huge binder, and when asked a question, she’d flip through it trying to find the subject and answer the question. But I have to say, in most cases it was deflected,” MacCallum replied, adding:

Karoline Leavitt clearly, as you say, Jacqui, had a very strong connection and relationship with the president. She was by his side all the time, was very deft at answering questions, and I think she also found a really good balance with reporters. There’s always going to be a little tension between the press corps and the press secretary — I think that’s just the nature of the game — but I think of people like Tony Snow, people who had that kind of rapport with the press, who were able to have a laugh.

She’s very personable; she’s friends with pretty much everybody who works the beat in one way or another. She’s going to be very, very hard to replace. She’s super articulate, and, as you point out, the youngest press secretary in history. A lot of people questioned this choice when it was made because she was so young — she ran for Congress in New Hampshire before she started working with the Trump team. But we’re just covering this as it’s coming out. Any other thoughts on that, Jacqui?

“Yeah — I mean, she could probably go into whatever job she wants at this point. She’s proven over and over again that she’s an effective communicator on any issue that comes before her,” Heinrich added, offering some more praise:

Obviously there’s a lot of preparation, and she shows that she does that prep work to be able to answer reporters’ questions — not just on camera, but also to be helpful behind the scenes. She’s responsive, and she has a group of people who work alongside her to help facilitate that. But she really leads all of those people and has been a good leader, a good manager, in her office as well. These are qualities usually found in someone much older, so she brings a lot of talent to this role and will be difficult to replace.

“Yeah, no — she’s definitely mature beyond her years, and she’s making a choice that’s hard, I think, for all working women, but understandable. A year and a half in that job is probably equivalent to five years in any other job, at least — maybe there’s no comparison, honestly. We all know that President Trump works 24/7, and there are no — well, we heard Marco Rubio say that in a podcast yesterday. Basically, the weekends might slow down a tiny bit, but that’s it. Otherwise it’s pedal to the metal pretty much 24/7, and she has handled that in a gracious, very efficient, professional manner throughout,” concluded MacCallum.

Watch above via Fox News.

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