Close-Up of Karoline Leavitt at White House Meeting Sends Social Media Into a Frenzy
An image of President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has raised questions about what is happening to her facial features.
Leavitt, 28, was photographed speaking to the media during a White House meeting between the U.S. president and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Washington, D.C., on November 7.
Photographer Saul Loeb snapped the picture of Leavitt while she had a strained look on her face as she was surrounded by cameras and reporters. The shot, taken in the Cabinet Room, eventually made its way to X.
“I’m not saying Karoline Leavitt looks like the 58-year-old abandoned first wife of any Soviet politician, but she does have angry communist hair,” one X user posted about the Saint Anselm College graduate.
After zooming in on Leavitt’s face in the White House photo, another poster replied, “Let’s assess the purple lips and bad teeth. WTF?” A second asked, “What happened to her face! Is she taking the new RumpRX medications?” Still others just focused on just her mouth.
“The angry mouth too.”
“Those lips!”
“I mean zoom in on her in this photo.”
“What’s wrong with her teeth?”
Leavitt also caught flak for her overall look in the snapshot, with many fault-finders concentrating on the Gen Z member supposedly appearing significantly older than her actual age.
“She’s only 28? She’s 20 years younger than I am. I could be her mother! Yikes, girl, this job and your boss has that effect on people,” one woman tweeted about Leavitt and Trump.
“She looks mighty old for 28… compare her to NYC’s new First Lady,” a self-described Canadian posted, referring to New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s 28-year-old wife, Rama Duwaji.
Comparisons between Duwaji and Leavitt have become a part of the current internet zeitgeist as people expressed bewilderment that the two political insiders were both born in 1997.
Mamdani, 34, pulled off a major upset by winning the Democratic NYC primary against former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. The general election ended the same way, with Cuomo, 67, losing to Mamdani again.
The Texas-born Duwaji reached her 28th birthday on June 30 of this year, six days after her husband secured the Democratic nomination. Leavitt, a native of New Hampshire, turned 28 on August 24.
Duwaji married Mamdani in February 2025 in a civil ceremony at New York City Hall after meeting on a dating app four years earlier. The Muslim couple also held a ceremony in Mamdan’s birth country of Uganda in July.
Leavitt got engaged to real estate developer Nicholas Riccio, 60, in 2023. She gave birth to their first son in 2024. The pair tied the knot in January 2025, right before Trump was inaugurated for the second time.
Despite calling Riccio a “great husband” during an interview with conservative commentator Megyn Kelly in February, the age gap between Leavitt and her spouse remains a constant talking point online.
Leavitt being the youngest press secretary in American history has not stopped trolls from regularly hitting her with age-related insults over her changing appearance and much older husband. She has also been consistently called out for stretching the truth as Trump’s official spokesperson.
In recent weeks, journalists have hounded Leavitt about Trump admitting to receiving an MRI at Maryland’s Walter Reed Medical Center. Initially, the White House did not explain why the 79-year-old grandfather needed an exam that is typically used to diagnose medical issues with internal organs.
When pressed by the media, Leavitt only offered a clearly scripted response that claimed the POTUS was in “exceptional physical health.” However, many observers did not buy that Trump was as fit as his hired mouthpiece maintained.
