Donald Trump has announced that he will name Karoline Leavitt, his campaign spokesperson, as White House press secretary in his next administration.

At 27, Leavitt will be the youngest White House press secretary in U.S. history.

The president-elect said in a statement that he was confident the former congressional candidate — who also served in the White House press office during the first Trump administration — “would excel at the podium and help convey our message to the American people as we Make America Great Again.”

“Karoline is smart, tough and has proven herself to be a very effective communicator,” Trump said.

A native of New Hampshire, Leavitt studied communications and political science at Saint Anselm College, a Catholic college in his home state.

While still in school, she interned at Fox News and in Trump’s White House press office. She told Politico in 2020 that she got her “first taste of the newspaper world” through these experiences. They led her to decide to pursue a career in press relations, she said.

Leavitt began working for the first Trump White House shortly after graduating in 2019, first as a presidential writer and then as deputy press secretary, according to the website for her candidacy to Congress in 2022.

“I helped prepare Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for high-pressure briefings (and) fought back against biased mainstream media,” her website said.

After leaving the White House, Leavitt served as communications director for Elise Stefanik, a senior Republican lawmaker whom President-elect Trump nominated to serve as United Nations ambassador.

Leavitt left that position to run for Congress, winning the Republican nomination for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District in 2022, only to lose in the general election to Democrat Chris Pappas.

The policy positions she listed on her campaign website largely align with many of Trump’s priorities. On the economy, she pledged to “REDUCE taxes” and “defend policies favorable to growth and the free market.”

She presented herself as a strong supporter of law enforcement and strong borders, including “ZERO tolerance for illegal immigration” and said she would work to ensure the border wall was completed.

In January 2024, she joined Trump’s third bid for the US presidency as campaign press secretary.

Today, she was chosen to become the youngest White House press secretary in U.S. history. Ron Ziegler was the previous record holder. In 1969, he was appointed to this position by Richard Nixon when he was 29 years old.

The public will soon see Leavitt at the iconic spot behind the White House briefing room podium — a space that gave rise to countless tense exchanges between members of the press and officials in the first Trump administration.

Trump had several press secretaries during his first four-year term, including Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany.

After leaving the White House, Sanders won the race for governor of Arkansas.

Grisham resigned after the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol and became a critic of Trump. McEnany continued to defend the president-elect as a Fox News personality.