Karoline Leavitt began her maternity leave on April 24 by telling reporters it would “likely” be her last gaggle for some time, telling the press corps with characteristic directness: “As you can see, I’m about ready to have a baby any minute, so I will see you guys very soon.” Three days later, she was back behind the podium.
The White House shooting at the Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night forced the youngest press secretary in American history to cut her leave short and return to official duties, posting on X on Monday April 27 to confirm she would hold a briefing at 1pm ET.
Leavitt had posted on Instagram to begin her leave on April 24, saying that when she and husband Nicholas Riccio found out she was expecting again, her first thought was “overwhelming gratitude and joy.” She had also directly thanked Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles “for fostering a pro-family environment in the White House.”
The December 2025 pregnancy announcement had revealed the couple are expecting a baby girl, due in May 2026. “The greatest Christmas gift we could ever ask for,” Leavitt wrote at the time. “My husband and I are thrilled to grow our family and can’t wait to watch our son become a big brother.”
Riccio is a 60-year-old real estate developer, 32 years Leavitt’s senior, a relationship she has described openly on multiple occasions as an unconventional love story that has brought her considerable personal stability during an extraordinarily demanding professional period. “I say ‘I walked into your life and it’s been a circus ever since,’ but God bless him because he’s fully on board,” she told Megyn Kelly in March 2025.
The couple were already parents to son Nicholas “Niko” Robert Riccio, born July 10, 2024, with Leavitt having returned to work just four days after that birth following the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. “I looked at my husband and said, ‘Looks like I’m going back to work,'” she told The Conservateur in October 2024.
The maternity leave pattern she has now established twice over, returning within days both times following major political events connected to Trump’s safety, reflects a personal commitment to the role that she has spoken about in terms of both professional obligation and genuine loyalty to a principal she clearly regards as central to her own sense of purpose.
Baby shower photographs shared on Instagram, taken at Trump’s northern Virginia golf club, showed a gathering that included the recently fired attorney general Pam Bondi alongside over 50 other White House officials, illustrating how deeply embedded Leavitt has become within the social fabric of the administration she represents publicly every working day.
The Correspondents’ Dinner shooting itself, in which suspect Cole Tomas Allen charged through a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons before being subdued by Secret Service agents, created the specific urgency that ended the maternity leave, with Leavitt among the White House officials rushed to safety during the incident and subsequently required to participate in the post-shooting communications response.
Her official X post following the shooting called Allen “a depraved crazy person who sought to assassinate the President and kill as many top Trump administration officials as possible,” and she confirmed she was with Trump and the First Lady backstage when they were rushed to safety by Secret Service.
