‘It’s Very Difficult’: Karoline Leavitt Reveals She’s Traumatized Working for Trump

Washington, D.C. – In an extensive interview with The Daily Mail, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, gave a detailed and unusually candid account of how the demands of serving as President Donald Trump’s chief spokesperson have affected her personal life, including her mental health and her marriage.

Leavitt told the outlet that the unpredictable, round-the-clock nature of the position has left her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) specifically related to scheduling anything outside of work.

“Honestly, I have PTSD about making plans, so I just don’t,” she said. “It’s very difficult to make plans in this job.”

She explained that she and her husband, 60-year-old real estate developer Nicholas Riccio, had booked three separate short weekend getaways over the summer. All three were canceled at the last minute because of unscheduled foreign-policy developments.

“We just roll with it,” she said. “If there’s a night where I happen to become free, then we take full advantage of that as a family.”

Leavitt’s typical day, especially on briefing days, begins before sunrise. She is often the first senior staffer in the West Wing, heading straight to the on-site gym before reviewing newspapers, monitoring cable news, and beginning a long series of calls that can include Cabinet secretaries or the president himself.

“Being press secretary, especially for President Trump, is a 24/7 job,” she said. “Even when I’m home, I spend a lot of time on the phone or checking the news.”

Despite the intensity, she emphasized that both Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles actively encourage her to protect family time. “I leave at a more reasonable hour than people may think,” she noted, “because that’s the line I’ve drawn — to get home, cook dinner, and do the bedtime routine with our son.”

Leavitt and Riccio welcomed their son, Nicholas Robert (Niko), in July 2024. The couple married in January 2025, just days before Trump’s second inauguration.

Leavitt has previously spoken about another source of trauma: the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, which occurred when she was three months postpartum.

In a November 18 appearance on the Pod Force One podcast with Miranda Devine, she described the lingering emotional impact of watching the footage while pumping breast milk in the campaign war room.

Leavitt’s path to the podium has been swift. A New Hampshire native and 2019 Saint Anselm College graduate, she interned at Fox News, worked in the first Trump White House communications shop, ran for Congress in 2022 (narrowly losing the GOP primary), and served as national press secretary for the 2024 campaign. In January 2025 she became the youngest person ever to hold the position and the first millennial press secretary.

In her ten months on the job she has faced some of the most intense news cycles of Trump’s second term, including defending the president’s November 14 “Quiet, piggy!” remark to a female reporter, responding to viral posts appearing to call for the execution of Democratic lawmakers, managing messaging around the government shutdown that ended November 9 and handling the forced release of the Jeffrey Epstein files after a veto-proof congressional mandate

She is the fifth press secretary Trump has employed across both terms; most of her predecessors lasted less than a year.

Leavitt has been open about her 32-year age difference with Riccio, whom she met in 2022 when she spoke at an event he hosted at one of his restaurants during her congressional campaign.

When Devine jokingly asked whether she could not find men closer to her own age who were sufficiently mature, Leavitt laughed and replied, “Honestly, no — if you want to know the truth.”

She described Riccio as a self-made businessman who is fully supportive of her career and an involved father to their son. “He’s in a place where he can support me in mine,” she said. “He’s my number-one fan and the best dad.”

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Leavitt told The Daily Mail she is determined to outlast the one-year average of her predecessors. “I want Niko to grow up knowing his mom helped in this historic time,” she said.

For now, the couple has adopted a simple rule: no advance bookings, no fixed expectations, and gratitude for whatever unscheduled hours they manage to carve out together. As Leavitt put it, “We’ve learned to celebrate the nights when nothing blows up.”