President Donald Trump’s firebrand press secretary Karoline Leavitt doesn’t believe the president’s discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to sources.
In addition to his unprecedented effort to overturn the 2020 election results, which culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, Trump has repeatedly made false claims that the election was stolen from him.
And despite her fervent public support of Trump, 27-year-old Leavitt privately contradicted his ramblings about the election—won by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, sources have told the Washington Post.
ADVERTISEMENT
The paper, undergoing its own MAGA makeover, reported Monday that two people who spoke to Leavitt about the subject said she believes Trump lost fair and square. “[She] disagreed with his claims of a stolen election,“ the Post reported.
Leavitt, however, claims she doesn’t recall the conversations, the paper added.
“As Karoline told the Washington Post, these claims are false, and The Daily Beast is fake news for printing these lies again,” a White House spokesperson told the Beast in a statement. “Karoline has spoken out forcefully against the fraud that took place in the 2020 election and continues to speak the truth on behalf of President Trump behind the podium every day.”
Leavitt indeed denied that Trump lost the 2020 election during 2021 interviews with OANN, and New Hampshire talk radio.
Last year, however, Leavitt moved quickly to delete X posts that seemed to contradict her election denial stance. In one, she criticized the Capitol insurrection, and in another, praised former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the 2020 presidential election. Trump to this day rails against Pence’s decision to green-light the results, falsely claiming rampant voter fraud.
At the time of the attack on the Capitol, Leavitt had just left Trump’s White House press office and began working for Republican Representative Elise Stefanik.
“Karoline learned from Elise that voters in the MAGA movement will reward and support you when you take tough positions to fight for the cause,” Alex deGrasse, Stefanik’s top political adviser, told the Post. He called Leavitt an “unwavering” MAGA believer.
After working for Stefanik, Leavitt unsuccessfully ran for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022 with an election-denying stance. She then went on to work for Trump’s PAC and later his presidential campaign.
And, Trump advisor Chris LaCivita, said she had by this point honed the skills to become the president’s youngest ever press secretary.
“I never gave it a second thought,” LaCivita said of putting Leavitt forward for the job. “It was always going to be Karoline.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
