MAGA Has Knives Out for TV Star Tipped to Replace Karoline Leavitt

MAGA diehards are trying to torpedo Scott Jennings’ apparent bid to replace Karoline Leavitt as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, according to a new report.

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The MAGA pundit, 48, is the current frontrunner for the job, the Daily Beast reported earlier this week, and he has been secretly meeting with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to discuss taking on the role, according to the Daily Mail.

But some of Trump’s most devoted allies are trying to pull the rug out from under Jennings’ apparent path to the podium, the New York Post reports.

“It’s not going to be him,” one person close to the administration told the outlet.

The backlash appears to center on Jennings’ ties to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, a longtime Trump adversary who has been missing from public view for more than two months.

Jennings, who once served as an aide to McConnell and says he’s known the senator since he was 16, rushed to McConnell’s defense last month amid mounting scrutiny over the senator’s disappearance, saying McConnell had “changed the trajectory of my life.”

Trump’s MAGA allies are finding it especially difficult to look past Jennings and McConnell’s brutal rebukes of Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to the Post.

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McConnell deemed Trump “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” while Jennings was similarly blunt in a CNN op-ed at the time: “Trump caused this insurrection with his lies and conspiracy theories about the election process being rigged against him.”

For both men, those words did not necessarily translate to action, with McConnell voting in February 2021 to acquit Trump of inciting the riot and Jennings endorsing Trump in the 2024 election while becoming one of his staunchest defenders on TV.

But that may not be enough to make bygones be bygones for some in the Trump camp.

Jennings did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment. When reached by the Post, he responded by texting a GIF of Patrick Swayze’s character James Dalton in the 1989 film Road House captioned: “Opinions vary.”

One senior administration official denied that Trump had zeroed in on any favorites.

“It’s an open book,” they said. “There are no favorites or preconceived ideas.”

According to the Post, some in Trump’s orbit believe his affection for Leavitt is making the transition harder. They worry that the president hasn’t yet accepted that Leavitt is leaving and is dragging his feet on finding her replacement.

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