Press secretary resigns into adjoining room, queue forms

Karoline Leavitt vacates the podium for an outside sofa, and Washington treats its favourite resignation as a new government office.

Magnus Worldweary13 Aug 20261 min readShorts

The White House has created a Department of More Time With Family so the press secretary can resign without leaving. Karoline Leavitt becomes an outside adviser, which Washington ranks as a change of sofa. Other officials are already forming a queue.

The White House has opened a Department of More Time With Family, an annex invented so that a press secretary may leave the building without the vulgarity of actually going. Karoline Leavitt, once the youngest occupant of the briefing-room podium, will now serve as one of the president's top outside advisers, which in this city is the same job with softer lighting and a different postcode.

One is reminded, inevitably, of every previous government that treated resignation as interior design. Correspondents were shown a lectern installed in an ordinary sitting room, from which the administration will speak via a sofa that counsel has certified, after solemn review, as being outside.

The public asked for accountability. We have given them a change of address. That is how sequels are made.

The department is already taking applications. Several other senior officials, the under-secretary for bittersweet chapters confirmed, have discovered they too cannot be their best selves from inside the building.