The White House is pushing back hard against Vanity Fair magazine after it published a close-up picture of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that looked ridiculous.
The photo was published on Tuesday as part of a profile of the Trump administration:
How’s Karoline Leavitt faring in the onslaught of questions about the Epstein files? “It’s pretty clear he wants us to be aggressively offensive when it comes to this issue.”https://t.co/4eezfCsLap pic.twitter.com/2JGVlODcln
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) December 16, 2025
The photo prompted an immediate clapback from the White House.
“It’s clear that Vanity Fair intentionally photographed Karoline and the White House staff in bizarre ways, and deliberately edited the photos, to try to demean and embarrass them,” a White House spokesperson told the Daily Mail.
“Karoline is a beautiful person and truly one of the most incredible people you will meet in politics, and she is doing an extraordinary job serving the American people as the White House Press Secretary,” the spokesperson added.
The public similarly accused Vanity Fair of purposefully making Leavitt look bad:
Vanity Unfair
— gcan (@gCAN9k) December 16, 2025
Vanity Fair has ZERO credibility!
— MAGA Scotty (@MAGAScotty) December 16, 2025
Y’all know you’re wrong for this picture.
— Maggie (@maggiemoda) December 16, 2025
You couldn’t be more obvious about your biases than using this close-cropped unflattering photo. But go ahead; keep going into negative credibility territory
— Bill LaMorey (@BillLaMorey) December 16, 2025
They turned up the contrast to accentuate wrinkles and pores. They zoomed to to make sure we see there are imperfections. It is comical that they had to try so hard to make a bad picture of her.
— Kevin S. (@LapstrakeNYS) December 17, 2025
On the left is how Vanity Fair photographed @KarolineLeavitt, the most beautiful White House Press Secretary in history.
On the right is how Vanity Fair photographed Joe Biden’s Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre.
This right here is why people have lost trust in the media. pic.twitter.com/FYedbFV97h
— Bo Loudon (@BoLoudon) December 16, 2025
Leavitt herself pushed back by publishing “behind-the-scenes” photos of herself at the White House.
View this post on Instagram
Christopher Anderson, the photographer who took the picture, defended his work.
“Style is for others to judge,” he told Newsweek. “My objective, when photographing the political world, is to make photographs that cut through the staged-managed image to reveal something more real, and for the images to honestly portray the encounter that I had at that moment. Being very close is part of how I have been doing this for many years now.”
“Some on the internet have expressed shock that I chose not to retouch blemishes, injection marks, wrinkles, etc. From my perspective, it should be shocking if I did indeed retouch these things out,” he added.
“Very close-up portraiture has been a fixture in a lot of my work over the years,” Anderson likewise told The Independent. “Particularly, political portraits that I’ve done over the years. I like the idea of penetrating the theater of politics.”
“I know there’s a lot to be made with, ‘Oh, he intentionally is trying to make people look bad,’ and that kind of thing – that’s not the case. If you look at my photograph work, I’ve done a lot of close-ups in the same style with people of all political stripes,” he added.
Vanity Fair’s profile of the Trump administration also provoked anger because of its out-of-context quotes, especially from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.
Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the…
— Susie Wiles (@SusieWiles) December 16, 2025
The way Vanity Fair took Wiles’ quotes out of context, you’d think she believes President Donald Trump is this, that, and the other.
But according to Wiles, Trump himself, and also Leavitt, this narrative is complete bull:
🚨 LEAVITT on Vanity Fair article: “The most egregious part of this article was the bias of omission that was clearly present.” pic.twitter.com/jYTOJ1Y9WD
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 16, 2025
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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