Trump Tells Leavitt She's 'Doing a Terrible Job,' Asks 'Should We Keep Her?'

President Donald Trump publicly told White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt she was 'doing a terrible job' during an Oval Office press conference on 31 March, singling her out while complaining about what he called overwhelmingly negative media coverage.

'I got 93 per cent bad publicity,' the president said. 'Some people say 97, but between 93 and 97.' He then pointed to Leavitt, 28, who was standing off camera. 'A person that gets 97 per cent of bad - maybe Karoline's doing a poor job, I don't know. She's my representative. You're doing a terrible job.'

Trump turned back to the press corps. 'Should we keep her? I think we'll keep her,' he said, drawing light laughter from the room.

A White House representative later said the comments were made in jest, The Irish Star reported. Leavitt, the youngest person ever to serve as White House press secretary, has not publicly responded.

Trump Offered No Source for Negative Coverage Claims

The exchange came as Trump criticised several major American newspapers by name. 'We have to straighten out our media,' he said. 'The New York Times circulation, you know, has gone way down. The Washington Post is almost extinct.'

He described the outlets as 'dishonest' and pointed to his 2024 re-election as evidence that voters no longer trust the press. 'When you get 93 to 97 bad stories, bad press and you win in a landslide, do you know what that says? People don't believe the press,' Trump said. He also took aim at The Wall Street Journal, which he said carried 'a lot of bad stories.'

Trump provided no source for the figures. He made a similar assertion in September 2025, telling reporters at the time that he had read the statistic 'someplace,' The Daily Beast wrote.

It was not the first time the president had publicly questioned Leavitt's performance. In October 2025, he asked a group of reporters, 'How's Karoline doing? Is she doing good? Should Karoline be replaced?'

Leavitt Already Facing Scrutiny Over AFP Photo Controversy

Trump's remark landed during a week in which Leavitt was already under a separate spotlight. Days earlier, news agency AFP confirmed it had removed a photograph of the press secretary taken during a November 2025 Thanksgiving briefing at the White House after being 'made aware' that staff were unhappy with the image.

AFP's director of brand and communications, Grégoire Lemarchand, told Mediaite that the decision was 'an internal editorial one, based on our standard quality and selection criteria.' He said there had been no formal request from the White House to remove it. Once the image was pulled from AFP's library, it was automatically deleted from Getty Images.

The photograph, taken by AFP photographer Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, showed Leavitt holding her son beside Waddle, the turkey pardoned by the president that day. The image was later widely shared on social media. The Democratic Party's official account on X posted a cropped version without comment.

The day before Trump's remarks, Leavitt had used her Monday briefing to criticise ABC, CBS and NBC for what she called 'despicable' coverage of the killing of 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman, a college student allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant in Chicago earlier in March.

On 1 April, the day after the Oval Office exchange, Leavitt posted behind-the-scenes images from the president's televised address on the conflict with Iran. She shared two Instagram Stories from inside the White House - one showing Trump waiting in the Oval Office before his speech, another taken from the Red Room as his address aired on Fox News. She made no mention of the president's comments from the previous day.

Leavitt, who announced in December 2025 that she is expecting her second child - a girl - with husband Nicholas Riccio, is due to begin maternity leave in May. She has served as press secretary since Trump's inauguration in January 2025, having previously worked as his 2024 campaign press secretary.