The White House isn’t doing the traditional replacement for White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is going on maternity leave next week.
Rather, Politico reports that they will have ‘familiar faces’ stand in for her while she’s gone, and that includes Vice President JD Vance and perhaps even President Trump.
Here’s the reporting:
SCOOP: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is scheduled to have her second child next week, a baby girl, Playbook’s Dasha Burns reports. Leavitt will be returning to the podium after her maternity leave, though it’s unclear exactly how many weeks she’ll take.
No one will be filling in for Leavitt formally during her leave — but the comms shop is planning to have some familiar faces at the podium to brief the press including VP JD Vance, Cabinet officials or even Trump himself. In the meantime, the White House press shop will be managed by White House comms director Steven Cheung and Leavitt’s team: Pat Adams, Anna Kelly, Kush Desai, Abigail Jackson, Liz Huston, Taylor Rogers, Davis Ingle, Allison Schuster, Olivia Wales, Micah Stopperich, Ellie Acra, Georgia O’Neil and Kieghan Nangle.
I like this. It will be a great opportunity to push the successful policies of the president with a higher profile figure like Vance ahead of the midterms.