Karoline Leavitt, the former Trump White House press secretary, said President Donald Trump holds women in unusually high regard and is an encouraging employer. “In fact, sometimes I think he might listen to women a little bit more than men and I think that he just has such respect,” Leavitt said on Fox News personality Sean Hannity’s “Hang Out” podcast.
The remarks began circulating online Sept. 22, 2026, and immediately split the room, drawing pushback online. By Sept. 23, critics on X were passing around the clip with a different read, citing Trump’s long record of attacks on female journalists.
Speaking the President’s Language
Hannity framed the conversation by suggesting that press secretaries for other presidents never had the leeway Leavitt did to take on journalists to their faces in the briefing room. Leavitt said the style was not her own invention. “Well, in a way, I’m sort of emulating what he does, right?” she said, adding that she was simply speaking the president’s language.
Leavitt built her reputation on briefing-room friction, and the clashes made her a fixture on cable news and a lightning rod online. The cadence, the bluntness, the readiness to single out a reporter by name and attack the question instead of answering it — all of it, she said, she had borrowed rather than invented for herself. Other press secretaries use their interviews after the podium to soften what happened and supply context. Leavitt went the other way, insisting the friction was the entire point of the job and giving credit for that license to the man who hired her.
By her account, the sharpest moments of her tenure were an echo of the president’s own style — and he was watching. Her former boss appreciated those podium moments, Leavitt said, and tried to catch her briefings whenever he could. She described Trump as a great boss and as “very uplifting to the people who work for him, very complimentary and very fun,” and said he enjoys watching people do well and likes handing them new opportunities. Her own climb followed that management style from campaign spokeswoman to the most visible speaking role in the building.
Leavitt, 29, was the youngest press secretary in U.S. history. She took the podium in January 2025 and stepped down on Aug. 27 to return to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. She said Trump was supportive when she chose to resign. On Oct. 5, Fox News announced that Leavitt will join the network as a contributor starting Nov. 1.
The Women She Named
Leavitt pointed to women Trump elevated across both of his terms, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Kellyanne Conway, who served as counselor to the president. HuffPost added Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who held the press secretary job Leavitt later occupied, to the list. She argued the pattern isn’t an accident.
On the same Sept. 22 episode, Leavitt claimed White House reporters privately apologized to her, though she named no reporters or outlets. “I’m sorry I had to ask that today. My bosses really wanted me to ask that; they know it’s an unfair question,” she said they told her.
Leavitt told Hannity there is “a performative aspect to the briefing room. In fairness, I think on both sides, right? But definitely with the press, and they have to do that because their bosses are demanding it,” and said that at some companies editors and executives “dictate” to reporters. She praised CBS under its right-leaning leadership: “I think we’ve seen a lot of improvement with them. And again, we’re not asking for like positive puff pieces every day. Just fairness, truth, accuracy, just telling a story or writing about factual information.”
Critics Point Elsewhere
Critics revived the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump made lewd comments about women. The recording has trailed him through two presidential terms and remains the first exhibit detractors reach for on the subject of respect.
A Sept. 23 piece noted that Leavitt did not mention former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem or former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, whom the piece described as every high-profile firing from the second Trump administration so far, all women. It also quoted Leavitt saying: “There’s been moments, right, where we’re in a room full of men and it’s Susie and me and he would look to us for our advice.”
