MAGA darling Karoline Leavitt is leaving the White House. What is that all about? First rat off the sinking ship, primary pecan to flee the nuthouse – or is she just another young woman who has belatedly felt the juggle isn’t worth the struggle?
Karoline’s beloved President Trump revealed her unexpected departure on social media in approving terms, saying that his press secretary – who he’s previously described as ‘smart, tough’ and ‘highly effective’ – was leaving ‘so she can spend more time with her family’.
The 28-year-old White House spokesperson gave birth to a daughter, Viviana, in May, and has a son Niko, born in July 2024.
In the beginning, like many women, Karoline thought she kould kope. Then, when the emotional and practical reality of motherhood hit home, her change of heart was clearly charted in her public pronouncements.
Last year Leavitt said: ‘I think every working mother understands the demands. And no matter where you are, what you’re doing, there is a sense of guilt.’
This week on social media she remarked that since the birth of her second child, she realised she couldn’t be the mother her children deserved while devoting the ‘constant time, energy and attention’, that her job requires.
So she will leave her prestigious, high-profile position at the end of this month, perhaps to happily dissolve in a high tide of Napisan and num-nums, never to be seen again. Somehow, I doubt it.
Leavitt is incorrigible, unflushable, a woman who one day might be capable of high MAGA political office herself. Trump has already said she’ll be kept on in an advisory capacity, for he is reluctant to lose this formidable operator.
President Trump announced that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is leaving her role to spend more time with her family, but insists she’ll be kept on in an advisory capacity
I should say at this point that while I think Leavitt was professionally outstanding in her role, her sneering treatment of journalists who challenged Trump and his administration was despicable, unforgivable. Not least because America is supposed to be a glittering, First World democracy, not a banana republic.
White House correspondents are there on behalf of their readers, listeners, viewers and the electorate in general. It is their job to ask difficult questions, to throw metaphorical bottles from the back, to challenge the orthodoxy and the ruling political elite.
For this, the awkward squad were dismissed by Leavitt as crooked, as ‘Left-wing hacks’ and ‘biased’ activists rather than honest professionals. If she ends her amazing career by sobbing about what might have been while elbow deep in a nappy boil-wash, I for one will not mourn the absence of her corrosive presence.
However, the real point is that if Karoline Leavitt cannot cope as a working mother, what chance do ordinary mums have? Leavitt is an ultra-woman; a luxe-living, 600-thread count, high-flyer for whom ordinary rules do not apply.
She could afford an army of nannies, for a start. If she had wanted to build a gold-plated creche in the middle of the White House ballroom for her ickle kiddies, Donald Trump would have personally approved the plans, provided he could come down every day to join in biccy time and playing Pin The Tail on JD Vance.
And it’s not just that the soon-to-be-former press secretary is presumed to earn a personal annual income of over £1million. Nor is it that she is married to Nicholas Riccio, a wealthy real estate developer, who just happens to be 32 years her senior.
‘It is atypical,’ she says of their relationship, ‘but it works’. Their congress also vividly depicts the shortfall in the feminist career experience, for the reality is that it is men – and only men – who can truly have it all.
The 28-year-old has two children, Niko and Viviana, with her husband, Nicholas Riccio, who is 32 years older than her
Look at Mr Riccio, who never had to give up his lucrative business, nor take a career break, nor fret if nanny wasn’t buttering Junior’s toast correctly. Nor did he have to worry that the shutters were slamming down on his window of fertility, because for him becoming a parent at the grand old age of 58 and 60 wasn’t a problem.
Compare this with the news that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has announced that she is freezing her eggs, future-proofing for a family to arrive at a more convenient time in her career arc. A time, may I suggest, that might never arrive.
The New York Democrat is 36 years old and, although on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Leavitt, she’s also struggling to navigate the conflicting demands of professional aspiration and building a family.
Some have dismissed her egg strategy as selfish, but surely the whole process of choosing parenthood, whatever your circumstances, is selfish in one way or another? Women like Leavitt and Ocasio-Cortez are damned if they do and damned if they don’t – and their mutual experiences reflect the dilemma of young, working women everywhere.
Still, I find it heartening that these smart, younger women no longer buy into the exhausting myth that they can have it all – meaning a flourishing career, an idyllic family life, plus professional and maternal personal fulfilment.
Forget it, sister. It is just not going to happen. That is why Karoline has kwit. And why Alexandria is egg-bound. From their very different perspectives they have seen the high personal cost suffered by the women who went before them; women often hollowed out by equal parts corporate job envy and maternal guilt.
They have worked out for themselves that the end result just might not be worth the game. And so they have taken steps to improve their circumstances and wrangle motherhood into a shape that suits them. You might not agree with their methods, but you cannot blame them for trying.
All I want is Brad and Jen back together
After seven years sober, Brad Pitt is back on the booze. ‘I can have a few [glasses of wine],’ he told Esquire. But I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.’
The recovery community are horrified – he’s only kidding himself, they say – but somehow I think Brad will be OK. Not least because he’s meeting up with ex-wife Jennifer Aniston again, for cosy, old pals’ dates.
Brad Pitt is said to be meeting up with ex-wife Jennifer Aniston again for ‘dates’… if so, their reunion would be greater than the one-in-a-lifetime eclipse, writes an excited Jan Moir
This is everything. All I want in life is for Brad and Jen to get back together. This would be a greater reunion than that little business this week when the sun and the moon met in a once-in-a-lifetime eclipse.
Let’s raise a glass to the happy ever after of my dreams.
Why Jack’s just the man for the 007 job
Auditions are currently being held for the next James Bond – and a new name has slipped into the frame. Step forward Jack Lowden, known for playing River Cartwright in the hit TV show, Slow Horses.
Later this year, the 36-year-old will appear as Mr Darcy in Netflix’s new adaptation of Pride And Prejudice (a frock-coated rite of passage for any acting hunk). Could it be he?
Lowden is the most intriguing possibility to be named so far. He’s certainly young enough and handsome enough to play 007. He’s Scottish – another bonus – and a man not a boy, someone with grit in his oyster. And he is streets ahead of the competition.
Slow Horses star Jack Lowden is by far the most intriguing possibility to be named for the next James Bond, our columnist says
Other names in the frame include Callum Turner (eyes too close together), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (too pretty) Louis Partridge (too young), Tom Francis (too boyband) and Jacob Elordi (please God, just no). Fingers crossed the Bond people do the right thing. And pick the right man.
Tinderbox Britain! Only travel if your journey is essential! Shops must stop selling portable barbecues! You can still buy fireworks, though! We will introduce additional funding for firefighters! Nine new reservoirs will be built! And also we plan to ‘help farmers with their irrigation’.
Why do Labour’s haphazard, chaotic plans to beat the heatwave fill me with doom and gloom?
Mostly because they sound less like a capable government in charge of a national crisis. And tragically more like Dad’s Army on manoeuvres.
Inappropriate? Kiedis has form…
Vogue Williams has criticised 63-year-old Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis for dating a 19 year old (when he was in his 50s). Nothing illegal there, but as Vogue says, just because you can, does it mean that you should?
Kiedis has form in the inappropriate relationship department. In fact, some might say the heavily tattooed rocker has been getting away with it for years. In his 2004 autobiography, Scar Tissue, Kiedis admitted to having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl when he was 23 years old.
Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, 63, with girlfriend Eileen Kelly, who is 33 years younger than him
This union was also proudly chronicled in the band’s hit song, Catholic School Girls Rule. No shame there! Following this, Kiedis was 24 when he embarked on a two-year-relationship with Ione Skye, the daughter of pop singer Donovan.
Now an actress, Ione was only 16 at the time, a minor in the state of California where they lived. So what? An unabashed Kiedis included a nude picture of the couple in Scar Tissue. Tru luv! In 1990, he was convicted of sexual battery and indecent exposure after one of the band’s gigs and fined $1,000 on each charge.
None of this put off Melanie Chisholm, who was a young-looking 25 and still called Sporty Spice when she dated Keidis in 1999.
I’m the last person on earth who’d ever defend the behaviour of the former Prince Andrew. But isn’t it strange that he has been demonised as a paedophile while Anthony Kiedis has escaped even a whisper of censure?
Mossy the woo-woo wellness guru…no one was buying it!
Ahoy there, Kate Moss! This week, the former supermodel was relaxing on a yacht in the Mediterranean, blissfully unperturbed about the failure of her wellness brand, which shuttered amid £2.9million of debt.
Cosmoss was a lockdown project, like all the worst ideas. Customers were supposed to covet her Sacred Mist perfume (top notes of tonka bean, with botanical extracts ‘to ground the body and uplift the mind’ – £70 for a piddling 100ml bottle), a £50 face cream that promised ‘a conscious approach to skincare’, and a £20 packet of cedarwood-scented joss sticks to ‘reset your mood’.
It would take more than this woo-woo rubbish to reset anyone’s opinion about the former hedonist and hellraiser turned late-life healer.
No one was buying it, Kate. In more ways than one.
