President Donald Trump is responding to speculation over outgoing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s successor with a little online trolling.
On Thursday night, the president shared an AI-generated image of himself behind the briefing room podium.
“The Best Press Secretary,” the image’s caption read.
Trump announced Leavitt’s resignation last week. Her decision, he said, was motivated by her desire to “spend more time with her beautiful young children and family.”
“Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party, as we work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Leavitt, who turns 29 on Aug. 24, will formally exit her role at the end of the month. The youngest White House press secretary in history shares two children with husband Nicholas Riccio, 61.
Since the announcement, rumors regarding who Trump may be considering to replace Leavitt have heated up across media outlets and among conservative pundits.
On Wednesday, NOTUS reported that the president had told some of his advisors that he’d prefer a man to fill the position, after four women across his two terms. Trump’s first-ever press secretary, Sean Spicer, served a tumultuous six-month tenure in 2017 and remains the only man to be selected for the job.
Some of the names floated include conservative CNN contributor Scott Jennings and Breitbart’s Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle. Ari Fleischer, who previously served as White House press secretary under former President George W. Bush, is also said to be in consideration.
When CNN’s Kaitlin Collins last week asked Jennings about the reports, he mostly shrugged off her inquiry before joking: “I would get to see you every day, and I would think you’d be happy about this.”