WHO COULD EVER REPLACE KAROLINE LEAVITT?!
Alina Habba Is Being Floated to Replace Karoline Leavitt—But a Bedminster Sighting Is Not an Appointment
For a White House built around President Donald Trump’s personal political style, replacing the person who speaks for him every day is not a routine staffing decision.
Karoline Leavitt will leave the White House press secretary’s job at the end of August after becoming one of the most recognizable members of Trump’s second administration. Trump has praised her performance and said she will remain an outside adviser as Republicans head toward the November midterms.
That leaves Washington with an obvious question: who gets the podium next?
Alina Habba is now one of the names at the center of that speculation.
Trump spent the weekend at his Bedminster club in New Jersey, where video and photographs showed Habba at a gathering attended by the president and members of his circle. The appearance drew attention because Habba had already been identified in multiple reports as a possible successor to Leavitt.
It is an intriguing data point.
It is not evidence that Trump has made his decision.
No successor had been publicly announced as of August 18, and neither Trump nor the White House has said that Habba’s presence at Bedminster was connected to the press secretary search.
That distinction is the most important one in the story.
The fact that Habba is being discussed for the job is well supported. The claim that Trump has effectively revealed his choice is not.
Leavitt announced last week that she would step down at the end of the month after recently returning from maternity leave. She gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Viviana, on May 1.
In explaining the decision, Leavitt said the demands of the press secretary role made it difficult to give her two young children the time and attention she believed they deserved.
Trump called her one of the best White House press secretaries in the history of the office and said she would continue as one of his top outside advisers.
That makes the vacancy unusual in one respect.
Leavitt is not leaving after a public rupture with the president. She is leaving with Trump’s praise, with an ongoing political role, and only a few months before an election that could determine control of Congress.
The successor therefore has to do more than conduct briefings.
The next press secretary will inherit a communications operation that has deliberately changed the White House’s relationship with the media, expanded access for podcasts and newer digital outlets, and placed a premium on aggressive defense of the president in real time.
Habba has an obvious qualification for that style of job: she has spent years doing exactly that for Trump in some of his most contentious legal battles.
She joined Trump’s personal legal team in 2021 and became one of his most visible television defenders while he was out of office. She represented him in high-profile civil litigation and frequently spoke to reporters outside courthouses and on cable television.
That media experience is one reason her name fits the speculation.
Her recent government service is more complicated.
Trump appointed Habba interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey in March 2025. When the temporary appointment approached its statutory limit and New Jersey’s federal judges declined to extend her tenure, the Justice Department used a series of personnel moves intended to keep her leading the office.
Federal courts rejected that arrangement.
In December 2025, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a lower-court ruling that Habba had not been lawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney and disqualified her from supervising cases in that capacity.
She subsequently left the U.S. attorney role and moved into an advisory position at the Justice Department.
That history does not legally prevent her from becoming White House press secretary.
The press secretary is a White House staff position and does not require Senate confirmation.
But the episode would follow her into the briefing room because reporters would almost certainly ask about the court rulings, the Justice Department’s appointment strategy, and Habba’s own prior comments as a federal prosecutor.
Her role in Trump’s New York civil fraud case would also require careful description.
The original judgment entered by Justice Arthur Engoron in 2024 imposed roughly $464.6 million in monetary liability on Trump and other defendants, with about $454.2 million attributed to Trump himself before interest.
In August 2025, a divided New York appellate court threw out the massive monetary penalty.
But it did not simply erase the entire case.
Four of the five appellate judges voted to allow the fraud finding to stand, while the panel split sharply over the reasoning and other remedies. The decision was a major financial victory for Trump, but describing it as the appellate court fully overturning Engoron’s fraud ruling goes farther than the judgment itself.
That legal distinction matters because Habba’s possible move to the press podium would turn her past courtroom advocacy into part of the political story surrounding her candidacy.
There is also no shortage of alternatives.
White House communications director Steven Cheung has worked closely with Leavitt throughout the second administration and already sits near the center of Trump’s communications operation.
Principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly has perhaps the most obvious internal path. She has served directly under Leavitt and already works inside the press shop that the next secretary would have to manage.
Katie Miller, a conservative podcaster and former administration communications official, has also been mentioned in reporting, as has former White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich.
CNN commentator Scott Jennings has been publicly floated as well. When asked about the possibility on CNN, he did not say that the White House had offered him the job and instead praised Leavitt’s performance.
Other reports have included names such as chief of protocol Monica Crowley and longtime Trump adviser Jason Miller.
The breadth of that list is itself a warning against treating any single appearance with Trump as a final signal.
Presidents routinely spend time with advisers, allies, donors, lawyers, family members, and political figures without every encounter representing a personnel decision.
Bedminster is especially poor evidence by itself because Habba has a longstanding relationship with Trump and deep ties to New Jersey. Her presence there is entirely consistent with her being considered for the press secretary role—but it is also consistent with the relationship they already had before Leavitt announced her departure.
The better question is what Trump appears to want from the next press secretary.
Leavitt’s tenure suggests several priorities.
The president values loyalty, familiarity with his political instincts, comfort in adversarial media settings, and the ability to defend policy without creating a separate political identity that competes with his own.
Habba clearly checks some of those boxes.
She is fiercely loyal, comfortable on television, experienced in hostile questioning, and already known to Trump’s political base.
But an internal candidate such as Kelly or Cheung would offer something Habba does not: continuity inside the day-to-day White House communications structure without the baggage of moving a high-profile former personal lawyer back into another prominent government-facing role.
A media figure such as Jennings would present yet another model—someone practiced at defending conservative positions before audiences that are not automatically friendly to Trump.
That is why the succession fight is more than a beauty contest among television personalities.
The administration has to decide whether it wants continuity, confrontation, outside-media reach, or some combination of all three.
The timing adds pressure.
Leavitt is scheduled to depart at the end of August, leaving only a little more than two months before the November midterms. The next press secretary could immediately become one of the administration’s most visible political communicators during the final stretch of the campaign season.
That argues for someone who can take over quickly.
It does not necessarily argue for Habba.
Trump has a long history of weighing personnel choices through personal chemistry and television performance, but he also has an experienced communications staff already operating around the president.
Until he makes the choice public, reports about frontrunners should be treated as what they are: indications of internal or external speculation, not an appointment.
The Bedminster video settled one small point.
Alina Habba remains close enough to Trump to be in his orbit at the same moment her name is being floated for one of the most visible jobs in the White House.
What it did not settle is whether she was there because of that job, whether she is Trump’s preferred candidate, or whether the president has decided on anyone at all.
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That distinction matters because the strongest version of this story is not that Trump accidentally revealed his next press secretary.
It is that Leavitt’s departure has opened a genuine competition inside Trump’s communications world—and Habba, despite the speculation surrounding her, is still only one contender in it.
