The Instagram post was simple enough: a white sweater dress, a Christmas tree, a baby bump, and the news that a little girl is due in May.
It took about an hour for the conversation to stop being about the baby.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Friday that she is expecting her second child. She called it “the greatest Christmas gift we could ever ask for.” But online, much of the attention shifted quickly — not to the pregnancy itself, but to her marriage, and specifically the 32-year age gap between Leavitt, 28, and her husband Nicholas Riccio, 60.
The couple welcomed their first child, Nicholas “Niko” Robert Riccio, in July 2024, and married in January 2025 — just days before Trump’s second inauguration.
Leavitt has addressed the age difference publicly before. In an interview earlier this year on The Megyn Kelly Show, she called their relationship “atypical” but described her husband as “my greatest supporter, my best friend, my rock.” She acknowledged that explaining the relationship to her family was initially “a challenging conversation,” but said her parents came around after getting to know him.
This will make Leavitt the first pregnant press secretary in U.S. history. She is already the youngest person to ever hold the position.
In her Instagram post, Leavitt thanked President Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles “for fostering a pro-family environment in the White House.” After the birth of her first child, she returned to work just four days later — a decision she attributed to the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The president literally put his life on the line to win this election,” she told The Conservateur at the time. “The least I could do is get back to work quickly.”
It is unclear whether she plans to take maternity leave after the birth of her daughter.
The reaction to Friday’s announcement says less about the pregnancy itself and more about the expectations placed on young women in politics when their private lives intersect with their public roles. For Leavitt, the pattern is now familiar: personal milestones don’t stay personal for long. By now, she probably doesn’t expect them to.
