Oops: Trump’s Press Secretary Pick Praised Mike Pence After January 6

Karoline Leavitt, the woman poised to become the White House’s youngest-ever press liaison, once condemned the January 6 riots and praised former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the 2020 election.

In two since-deleted posts on X, CNN reports, Leavitt broke sharply from the false January 6 narrative that President-elect Donald Trump and his lackeys have since embraced: Namely, that the crowd that attacked the U.S. Capitol almost four years ago actually assembled for a peaceful and reasonable protest in light of overwhelming evidence that the election had been stolen. At the time, Leavitt praised Eugene Goodman—the Capitol Hill police officer who lured rioters away from the Senate—as a “hero.” She also reshared a post from Senator Tim Scott’s then communications director, who thanked Pence for keeping “the wheels of democracy moving” by certifying the election for President Joe Biden.

It’s not clear when Leavitt deleted the two posts, though her change of heart dates back at least three years. After working as a presidential writer and assistant press secretary in the first Trump White House, Leavitt worked briefly for New York Republican Elise Stefanik before launching an unsuccessful bid for a congressional seat in New Hampshire. Concerns about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election prompted her to run for office, Leavitt said in a 2021 statement. (Ironically, after making “election integrity” a pillar of her campaign, Leavitt did not appreciate when a local news reporter asked her how she could be confident in her own primary victory.) The now 27-year-old most recently worked as the national press secretary for Trump’s reelection campaign, where she repeatedly disparaged the mainstream media she’ll now presumably interface with every day.

Leavitt is, notably, far from the only Trump underling to change her tune about January 6: A series of prominent Republicans also softened their condemnations of the riot—and Trump’s starring role in it—as it became increasingly apparent that Trump would again be his party’s presidential nominee. Republican voters, too, have grown more sympathetic to the Capitol rioters, polling shows, and are now less likely to say participants were violent. Trump himself has raised the possibility of pardoning the January 6 rioters, including as recently as Sunday. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to Biden’s surprise decision to pardon his son Hunter. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”