EASTORA REPORT | Karoline Leavitt used to stand at the White House podium defending Donald Trump. Now she is confronting an awkward reality for his party: the man who brought millions of voters into the Republican fold will never lead its presidential ticket again.
“He’ll never be at the top of the ticket again,” the former press secretary said on My View with Lara Trump, days after Democrats won both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterms. Trump is serving his second elected term; the Constitution bars a third.
But her point was not simply about a constitutional limit. Republicans had just lost badly without Trump on the ballot. That left a question for the next election: who could reach the working-class voters he drew to the party between 2016 and 2024?
Leavitt called for a new “America First” figure who could speak to people about their daily struggles and give them hope. One of her sharper observations concerned the winners: Democrats, she said, had persuaded voters to turn out by promising to make their lives better. Republicans needed to learn from that.
She did not spare her own side entirely. “We’ve got to humble ourselves,” she said, urging the party to examine each race and change its message. Yet she also argued voters wanted immediate results and had not felt the benefits she attributed to Trump’s policies, especially on living costs.
To steady disappointed Republicans, she reached for history. Barack Obama’s Democrats lost 63 House seats and six Senate seats in 2010, she noted. A midterm defeat, she suggested, need not spell the end of a political movement.
And Trump himself? Leavitt said she had spoken to him several times since the vote and found him “calm, cool and collected.” She believed he had expected a difficult result but campaigned for his candidates anyway.
The interview was not a break with her former boss or an endorsement of a successor. Leavitt said she had no plans to run for office herself. Her message was more uncomfortable than a name: Republicans must find someone who can win over Trump’s voters without having Trump at the top of the ticket.