Karoline Leavitt appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday and was questioned about the short stint of her successor as Donald Trump‘s White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia.
After doing just one briefing that lasted 14 minutes, Zacharia was ousted last Friday, after less than a week in the job.
Leavitt told Maher that “it’s a tough job” and one of the “hardest” in Washington.
“That pressure in that room is enormous,” Leavitt said. “The press are vicious, and you know I give her credit for standing up there. And as the president said, it wasn’t a good fit, and that’s okay. I wish her well, and we’re on to the next. And he has a lot of options.”
Maher, though, said that that “sometimes you give up a home run at the first inning. They don’t usually go to the bullpen that quick.”
Leavitt responded, “Look, I mean, the president did have a hit show called The Apprentice, where he’s known for, you know, moving on from people. So hey, it’s in his nature to do that type of thing, I guess.”
Earlier, Maher quipped that Zacharia’s tenure was shorter than the dinner he had with Trump last week that lasted for four hours. At that sitdown at the White House, Maher was joined by Stephen A. Smith and Kid Rock. The HBO host credited Trump with listening to him as he challenged him on certain issues, like ICE, degrading Ukraine’s Starlink access, as well as telling the president that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “is dragging you down.”
“There are so many moments where he gets it,” Maher said. “Like I said to him, ‘You know, when you said the Supreme Court, they’re voting against me? You know that’s not how the Supreme Court is supposed to work, right? They’re not voting for or against you. You appoint them and they make decisions.’ And he went, ‘Yeah, I took that one too personally.’”
Maher added, “He gets it and then he doesn’t get it. Now I’m an optimist. I prefer to think of the president as half sane.”
In response, Leavitt tried for a bit of whataboutism, telling Maher that Trump is “very sane. He’s a lot more, I think we can agree, he is far more sane than the last one. We had a mental patient.”
“He’s far more energetic,” Maher said.
But Maher returned to what happened during the dinner with Trump. “We have a nice conversation and he goes, ‘You’re my enemy. Pass the peas.’ I mean, he will say that, ‘You’re my enemy,’ and then a minute later, we’re just talking normally, and we don’t act like enemies.”
Maher also told Leavitt that he was worried over what Trump will do if the midterms go bad for Trump and Republicans. “We know he likes vengeance,” he said. Leavitt, though, said that she doesn’t “worry about the president. Look, he loves our country very much, and he wants to make it right.” She even suggested that he would work with Democrats, noting that he has worked with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
During her tenure, Leavitt was known for her steadfast defense of the president, even if that meant delivering regular lectures to the media on their coverage of the administration. Even though she was highly praised for her performance, it didn’t stop the fall in Trump’s approval rating, which has dropped to an average of 38.8% from 50.5% at the start of his term, per Real Clear Politics.
Maher pressed Leavitt on Trump’s recent moves to waive sanctions on Russia, calling it “unconscionable,” along with “basically putting a knife in the back of [Ukraine’s president] Zelensky.”
Maher asked, “Is there anything that could make you, because a lot of Republicans now say we’ve had enough, make you not be loyal to whatever he was doing?”
Leavitt, who is soon to become a commentator for Fox News, gave no indication that there was anything. “He was my boss, but to me, he’s also a friend, and he gave me the opportunity of a lifetime.”
