Karoline Leavitt Calls Off Maternity Leave After Trump Shooting
POTUS over PTO.
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is delaying her maternity leave after gunfire erupted steps away from President Donald Trump and top administration officials.
Leavitt, 28, announced Monday morning that she will hold a press conference at 1 p.m.—days after saying she planned to begin maternity leave. She is scheduled to have her second baby sometime this week.
“This will likely be my last gaggle for some time. As you can see,” the press secretary said Friday with a hand on her 9-month-pregnant stomach. “I’m about ready to have a baby any minute.”
Leavitt and her 60-year-old husband attended the WHCA dinner days prior to giving birth.
Taylor Hill/WireImage
Despite that, Leavitt and her husband, 60-year-old real estate developer, Nicholas Riccio, were both in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday when chaos unfolded.
Leavitt was seated next to Trump, 79, and Melania, in the ballroom at the Washington Hilton when the shots rang out.
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Minutes before the shooting, Leavitt made a remark that would later take on an eerie tone, telling reporters that Trump—who was set to address the crowd—was “ready to rumble.”
“I will tell you this speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It’ll be funny. It’ll be entertaining,” she said. “There will be some shots fired tonight.”
The suspect, 31-year-old Cole Thomas Allen, sent a sprawling manifesto to his family moments before attempting to storm the premises, outlining an alleged plan to kill Trump and top administration officials.
“Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” he wrote.
“I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that,” Allen wrote.
This isn’t the first time Leavitt has put her personal life on hold amid a crisis tied to Trump. In July 2024, she returned to the campaign just four days after giving birth to her son, Nikko, following the then-candidate’s near-assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I looked at my husband and said, ‘Looks like I’m going back to work,’” Leavitt recounted in an interview with the right-wing outlet The Conservateur last year.
The White House communications team did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the timing of Leavitt’s leave.
The now famous image of Trump after a bullet grazed his ear in Butler.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
It remains unclear when the press secretary plans to step away, or for how long. No replacement has been announced, with top Trump officials—and possibly Trump himself—expected to rotate at the White House podium during her absence.
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