Karoline Leavitt, 28, is the youngest White House press secretary in history. In my opinion, she’s also the best.
I’ve been a fan of the political game for over 60 years and a follower of the debates since JFK made Nixon sweat on national television. Leavitt has total control over the older, more seasoned members of the press shouting questions and demanding answers.
She does it with preparation. Lots of it. “I prepare a lot for the briefings, and I walk in there with a good grip on what they’re going to ask, because I read and I watch and I prepare all day, all morning,” Karoline Leavitt explained to Ryan King, a reporter for The New York Post.
Leavitt told another Post reporter, Miranda Devine, about her husband, Nicholas Riccio, who is 32 years older than she is. What did her parents think of the big age difference? “They were a little skeptical at first,” Karoline said. “Once they got to know him and saw who he is as a man and his character and how much he adores me, I think it became quite easy for them, and now we’re all friends.”
The foursome became a fivesome in July 2024 when Karoline gave birth to a son, Niko. Karoline was quite a softball player growing up in New Hampshire and in college there. She began working in the first Trump White House writing letters to constituents from the correspondence office. She worked her way up the internal ladder and became director of communications for Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York.
At the age of 23, in 2022, she ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District and lost. But she left a big impression on Donald J. Trump. “Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator,” said one of her biggest fans, President Trump.
No doubt about it, Karoline Leavitt will run for President and be a very tough debater.
Another impressive woman in the news is Jessica Tisch, who has a law degree from Harvard. She’s been in the news off and on since Bill de Blasio was mayor of New York. The liberal Democratic mayor chose Tisch to be commissioner of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications in 2019. She previously served de Blasio in the police department as commissioner William Bratton’s deputy for information technology.
She served under the current Adams administration as sanitation commissioner and police commissioner. Lucky for us Jews, she’ll stay on in her current title under Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Tisch wants to add 5,000 police officers, to beef up the force from the current 35,000 to 40,000.
Mamdani doesn’t want to add any. Even though both are Democrats, there’s bound to be many disagreements, especially when the mayor is considered a socialist or communist Israel-hater.
Let’s hope that the 44-year-old Tisch, who observes her family’s brand of Judaism and is a supporter of Israel, celebrates many birthdays running the New York Police Department and can ensure that the anti-Israel mayor provides protection for Jews and Jewish neighborhoods.