TV Star Emerges as Shock Frontrunner to Replace Karoline Leavitt
Scott Jennings Is Suddenly the Favorite to Replace Karoline Leavitt - But the White House Is Denying the Report That Put Him There
A report says Susie Wiles has privately courted the CNN conservative for the press secretary job. The White House says those meetings did not happen. With Leavitt leaving in days and no successor announced, the contradiction has become the most revealing part of the search.
The search finally has a frontrunner - with an asterisk
For more than a week, the race to replace White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt looked less like a normal hiring process than a Washington guessing game.
Names circulated. Prediction markets moved. Trump allies appeared on television and at the president's Bedminster club. But the White House did not announce a successor.
Now one name has moved to the center of the speculation: Scott Jennings.
The 48-year-old CNN senior political commentator, former George W. Bush White House aide and longtime adviser to Mitch McConnell has emerged as the betting-market favorite to become President Donald Trump's next press secretary.
A new report goes further.
The Daily Mail, citing three sources familiar with the selection process, reported that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has spoken with Jennings about the job and views him as her preferred candidate.
One unnamed source summarized the claim in the most dramatic possible terms: the job is allegedly "his if he wants it," and "he does."
If that reporting is accurate, Jennings is not merely a name on a cable-news shortlist.
He is a serious contender with the support of the most powerful staff member in Trump's White House.
There is one major problem with treating that conclusion as settled fact.
The White House has officially denied that the reported meetings between Jennings and Wiles took place.
Jennings has not publicly confirmed that he was offered the job.
Trump has not announced a decision.
So the strongest version of the story is not that Scott Jennings has already won the press secretary race.
It is that the most detailed report yet about Leavitt's possible replacement is now colliding directly with an official White House denial.
What the anonymous-source report actually says
The report behind Jennings' sudden rise is unusually specific.
According to accounts attributed to sources close to the selection process, Jennings met with Wiles about the press secretary role before Leavitt formally announced on August 12 that she would leave the White House at the end of the month.
The same reporting says Wiles and Jennings remained in contact and met again over the weekend at Morton's, the Washington steakhouse a short distance from the White House.
The sources described the two as speaking frequently and portrayed Wiles as strongly interested in placing Jennings behind the briefing-room podium.
Those details matter because Wiles is not a peripheral adviser.
As White House chief of staff, she sits at the center of the administration's personnel decisions, message discipline and access to the president.
A candidate backed by Wiles would therefore begin with a significant internal advantage.
But anonymous sourcing creates an obvious limit.
The public cannot independently inspect the conversations, and neither participant has confirmed the core account.
That is especially important because the White House did not merely decline to comment.
It denied that the reported Wiles-Jennings meetings occurred.
A responsible account therefore has to hold both facts at once: multiple unnamed sources say the discussions happened, while the White House says they did not.
Until one side produces on-the-record confirmation or Trump makes his choice, the report remains significant but disputed.
Jennings himself is doing very little to kill the rumor
If Jennings wanted the speculation to disappear, he has had several easy opportunities to make that happen.
He has not taken them.
When CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked him on August 13 whether he had heard from the White House about the opening, Jennings did not issue a denial.
Instead, he joked that taking the job would mean Collins could see him every day.
When she noted that his answer was "not a no," the exchange ended without Jennings clarifying his intentions.
In another CNN discussion, Jennings first responded "No" when pressed about whether he was putting himself forward, then quickly shifted to "I don't know."
He used the moment to praise Leavitt, calling her one of the greatest White House press secretaries of the last three decades.
None of that proves he wants the job.
It does explain why the rumor has survived.
A flat statement - "I am not a candidate and I will not take the job" - would dramatically change the story.
Jennings has not said that.
His public posture has instead been playful, ambiguous and carefully noncommittal.
Why Jennings makes sense on paper
The case for Jennings is not difficult to understand.
He already performs a version of the press secretary's most visible task several nights a week.
On CNN, Jennings is routinely placed on panels with Democratic strategists, liberal commentators and reporters who strongly disagree with him.
His job is to defend conservative positions, argue the Trump administration's case and respond quickly under pressure.
That is not the same as being White House press secretary.
A government spokesperson has responsibilities a television commentator does not: mastering policy details, coordinating with agencies, protecting classified or sensitive information, communicating accurately with reporters and speaking for the president rather than for himself.
But the overlap is obvious.
Jennings is comfortable on live television, accustomed to hostile questioning and experienced at compressing complicated political arguments into short answers that travel easily on social media.
He also has real Republican-government experience.
Jennings worked on both of George W. Bush's presidential campaigns and later served as a special assistant to President Bush in the White House.
He has held senior political roles for Mitch McConnell and has been one of the Kentucky senator's longtime outside advisers.
Today, CNN identifies him as a senior political commentator; he also hosts a radio program and remains active in Republican politics and communications.
That combination - government experience, campaign experience and national television experience - makes him a more conventional communications professional than his cable-news persona sometimes suggests.
Trump already knows what Jennings sounds like when he is defending him
The other reason Jennings is plausible is more personal.
Trump does not have to imagine how Jennings would defend his administration in hostile media settings.
He has watched him do it repeatedly.
Trump has publicly praised Jennings and promoted his book, describing him as a "patriot" who "gets it."
Jennings' 2025 book, A Revolution of Common Sense, presented a favorable account of Trump's return to Washington and was written with access to figures in the president's orbit.
For a White House in which personal trust and message loyalty are major hiring criteria, that history is relevant.
Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer has argued that whoever takes the role will need an existing relationship with the president.
Jennings appears to meet that test better than an outsider who would need months to learn Trump's political instincts.
There is still an important distinction.
Being praised by Trump is not the same as being selected by Trump.
And in this White House, the president's preference can override every other internal recommendation.
The biggest obstacle may have nothing to do with Jennings' qualifications
The same reporting that elevated Jennings also identified a reason he may not get the job.
Trumpworld sources have repeatedly suggested that the president would prefer another woman behind the podium.
That preference has not been announced by Trump as a formal hiring requirement.
It is an assessment attributed to people in his orbit.
The distinction matters because speculation has sometimes turned that insider expectation into a direct presidential declaration.
What is publicly established is narrower.
After Sean Spicer, every Trump White House press secretary has been a woman: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, Kayleigh McEnany and Karoline Leavitt.
Several Trump advisers told the Washington Examiner they expect that pattern to continue.
One longtime adviser said people floating Jennings were not paying attention and predicted the next press secretary would be a woman.
That makes Jennings' position unusual.
He may be the strongest male candidate in the conversation while simultaneously facing a preference that could be decisive before his television skills are even weighed.
Alina Habba just changed the field by taking herself out
The succession conversation has already moved quickly enough to show why prediction-market favorites should not be mistaken for White House decisions.
Alina Habba was recently the leading name on the Kalshi market.
That changed after she publicly rejected the speculation.
On Wednesday, Habba wrote that she was "not in the running for any job" and mocked anonymous-source reports suggesting otherwise.
Her statement is important because Habba had looked plausible on paper.
She is a longtime Trump ally and former personal attorney, has extensive television experience and briefly served as counselor to the president before moving into the Justice Department.
She had also been seen at Trump's Bedminster club, which fueled speculation that she was maneuvering for Leavitt's job.
But physical proximity to the president turned out to be weak evidence of candidacy.
Habba's denial is a useful warning for the entire succession story.
Being photographed near Trump, appearing in a prediction market or being named by an anonymous source does not establish that a person has asked for - or been offered - the job.
After Habba's statement, Jennings moved to the top of the Kalshi market, with Leavitt's deputy Anna Kelly also among the leading names.
The Bedminster 'Apprentice' story is colorful - and still unverified
One of the most memorable details in the new reporting came from Trump's Bedminster golf club.
An unnamed source described several possible candidates trying to get the president's attention over the weekend and compared the atmosphere to The Apprentice, Trump's old reality-television show.
The same account said the jockeying "reeks of desperation."
It is a vivid image.
It should not be confused with an official account of the selection process.
The report placed figures including Habba, White House aide Natalie Harp and others in the broader succession conversation while Trump was at Bedminster.
But Habba has since said she is not pursuing any job.
Harp is unquestionably close to the president and serves as a special and executive assistant, but her presence around Trump is normal for her current role and is not, by itself, evidence that she is seeking the podium.
The episode therefore works best as evidence of how intense the speculation has become, not proof of who is actually on Trump's final list.
Leavitt is leaving at the worst possible moment for a quiet transition
The uncertainty is amplified by the timing.
Leavitt, 28, will leave at the end of August after telling the public that she cannot give both the press secretary job and her two young children the time and attention they deserve.
She gave birth to her daughter Viviana in May and returned to the White House after a short maternity leave.
Trump announced that Leavitt will remain one of his top outside advisers and an influential Republican voice heading into the midterm elections.
Her departure is therefore not being presented by either Leavitt or Trump as a political rupture.
But it creates an immediate communications problem.
The administration is heading into the final stretch before the November midterms while dealing with the Iran war, cost-of-living concerns and difficult national polling.
Leavitt has been one of Trump's most recognizable defenders and the only person to serve as his press secretary during the second term.
Replacing her is not simply a matter of finding someone who can read announcements from the podium.
The successor will have to become an effective national surrogate almost immediately.
The reports about maternity leave need the same fact-check discipline as the succession rumors
Leavitt's departure has also generated anonymous accounts about how difficult her return to work became.
CNN reported that Trump continued to call Leavitt frequently while she was on maternity leave and sometimes asked when she would return.
Other outlets, relying on unnamed insiders, described the contact and workload as overwhelming and portrayed the job as contributing to burnout.
Those reports provide context.
They are not the same as Leavitt publicly accusing Trump of forcing her out.
She has not done that.
In her own statement, Leavitt described leaving as a bittersweet family decision and expressed gratitude to Trump.
Trump publicly said he understood and respected her choice.
The most defensible conclusion is that the job was extraordinarily demanding, Trump remained in frequent contact during her leave, and Leavitt ultimately said she could not balance the role with being the mother she wanted to be.
Claims about exactly how emotionally overwhelming particular calls became come from anonymous sourcing rather than Leavitt herself.
Why the job may be less attractive than it looks
The White House press secretary is one of the most visible unelected jobs in American government.
It is also one of the most punishing.
A successful press secretary has to satisfy two audiences that often want opposite things.
The president wants loyalty, discipline and a messenger who will aggressively defend the administration.
The press corps wants timely, accurate information and someone empowered to answer questions even when the answers create political problems.
Leavitt managed that tension in a way even some journalists who strongly disagreed with her acknowledged was effective.
CNN media analyst Sara Fischer described her as responsive and a skilled communicator who usually returned reporters' inquiries even when they disliked the answer.
Jennings would enter with an obvious advantage in confrontation.
The harder question is whether he wants to trade the independence of a highly visible media career for a job in which every answer becomes an official statement of the United States government.
As a commentator, Jennings can disagree with Republicans, revise an argument or speak for himself.
As press secretary, he would speak for Trump.
That is a fundamentally different professional bargain.
A deputy may still be the least dramatic answer
The intense focus on celebrity surrogates can obscure the most conventional option.
Anna Kelly is already the principal deputy press secretary.
She has represented the White House increasingly in television and radio appearances and already understands the administration's communications structure.
Promoting a deputy would avoid the learning curve that comes with bringing a television personality or outside political figure into one of the most operationally demanding jobs in the building.
It would also fit the insider expectation that Trump may want another woman in the role.
That does not mean Kelly is the favorite.
It means the succession process has more than one logic.
One logic says choose the most combative and recognizable Trump defender available.
Another says promote someone who already knows the machinery of the West Wing and can keep it running without disruption.
Jennings fits the first model unusually well.
Kelly fits the second.
What would turn the Jennings story from rumor into fact
At this point, the Jennings story has more supporting detail than most of the names floated since Leavitt announced her departure.
There are multiple anonymous sources claiming internal discussions.
There is a reported relationship with Wiles.
There is Jennings' refusal to give a clean public denial.
There is Trump's history of praising him.
And there is a prediction market that now puts him at the top of the field.
But none of those things equals an appointment.
The White House denial remains a major piece of contrary evidence.
A direct confirmation from Jennings or Wiles would materially change the story.
So would an on-the-record statement from Trump naming a favorite.
Until then, "frontrunner" is best understood as a description of current reporting and market speculation - not an official White House status.
The clock is now more important than the rumor
Leavitt's final day is approaching.
As of August 20, there are only 11 days left before the end of the month.
The White House can function without immediately naming a permanent press secretary; during Leavitt's maternity leave, senior officials sometimes handled public briefings and Trump remained his own most prominent spokesman.
But operating that way through the heart of a midterm campaign would be a strategic choice, not a normal transition.
That is why the next move matters.
If Trump chooses Jennings, the administration would be taking one of conservative media's most recognizable defenders and placing him inside the government at the precise moment Republican messaging is under maximum pressure.
If Trump chooses a woman already inside his orbit, the Jennings episode may be remembered as another example of Washington's anonymous-source hiring market getting ahead of the president.
And if no immediate replacement is named, it would suggest Trump believes the traditional press secretary role is less essential than it once was.
For now, Scott Jennings is the most interesting name in the race.
He is also a reminder of the difference between a compelling succession story and a completed succession decision.
The rumor has a frontrunner.
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The White House still does not have a publicly announced successor.
