Karoline Leavitt leaves behind a legacy of lies. What’s next for the Trump aide? | Arwa Mahdawi

The press secretary’s communication style made her eminently qualified for a role in this administration

K aroline Leavitt, 28, is leaving her demanding job as Donald Trump’s press secretary to spend more time with her two young children and her 60-year-old husband. According to a post by Trump On Truth Social, Leavitt will be departing her role at the end of the month and will serve as one of Trump’s “top outside advisors”.

In other words: the official version of events is that Leavitt is resigning on her own terms for family reasons and not because Trump’s approval ratings are at record lows and she’s a rat fleeing a sinking ship.

But is the official version of events the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Don’t bother asking Leavitt – I’m not sure she knows much about the T-word. She may have been the youngest White House press secretary in history, but there’s no denying her communication style made her eminently qualified for a role in the Trump administration . I won’t muck about with euphemisms such as misrepresented or stated without evidence or made false claims. Leavitt’s legacy in government was attacking Trump’s enemies and spouting lie after lie after lie.

Being a lowly writer means I am held to far higher standards about what I can say than the departing press secretary or her boss, the president of the United States. Unlike Leavitt or Trump, I actually have to provide facts and evidence to back up my assertions. So here we go: here are a few fun facts about Leavitt’s tenure in public office.

First, there’s her role in promoting lies about the economy. One of the most significant economic policies of Trump’s second term has been his global tariffs, which were initially extended even to volcanic islands inhabited only by penguins . During a press briefing in March 2025, Leavitt told reporters that tariffs were a “tax cut for the American people”. Economists have said this is nonsense. “Economists don’t agree on much, but we agree tariffs are taxes on consumers,” Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist told the fact-checking website Politifact. The non-partisan Tax Foundation has also run the numbers and said that in 2025, the Trump tariffs “amounted to an average tax increase of $1,000” per US household.

But what’s $1,000, eh? It’s nothing to Trump, who made a staggering $2.2bn during the first year of his second term in various questionable ways. One imagines it’s also not much to Leavitt, who earns just under $200,000 in her role and whose husband, Nicholas Riccio, manages what has been described as a multimillion-dollar real estate business.

And if you feel aggrieved about tariffs increasing the already sky-high cost of living, according to Leavitt, you should just work harder (or marry a real estate tycoon). “Some of these kids, and I call them kids because they are in their 20s and have never had real jobs, and they’re complaining things are expensive,” Fox News’ Jesse Watters told Leavitt last month during a conversation about young Democratic party voters.