Karoline Leavitt, 29, President Donald Trump’s former press secretary, said Trump curses, including in private, in an interview on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s podcast, “Hang Out with Sean Hannity,” released Tuesday, September 22, 2026. Hannity is 64.
“Does he curse?” Hannity asked. “Yeah, he does,” she said. “He curses a lot, actually. Well, not particularly on those calls. Just, in general.”
Leavitt did not hedge. Their subject at that point was the harder edge of Trump’s diplomacy, and specifically his calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, which she described as tense. Leavitt told Hannity that the 80-year-old president sounds much the same behind closed doors as he does in public. “What he says to the media publicly is exactly what he’s saying behind the scenes privately, too,” she said. “There’s no games.” The answer put on the record a side of Trump the public has mostly caught only in flashes.
A Lunch With Starmer
Leavitt cited a lunch in Britain with Keir Starmer, then the British prime minister, who resigned in July 2026. By her account, Trump seized on U.K. immigration policy to lay into his host. “Your policies here are so stupid. You need to close your borders,” she recalled him saying. “I know your country, I know your people, they hate what you’re doing.” Starmer, she said, sat and listened. She did not say Trump cursed during that exchange.
Language on the Public Record
Trump has never needed a swear word to land an insult. He has called Rep. Thomas Massie a “loser” and, more recently, lumped him among “low IQ” critics, and he routinely brands opponents such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom “stupid,” all of it broadcastable.
With a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran under strain in June 2025, Trump told reporters that the two countries had been fighting so long that they “don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.” The next day, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte defended the outburst, saying that “daddy has to sometimes use strong language.”
At a Las Vegas rally in June 2024, Trump reached for an unprintable epithet to describe an executive order on asylum that then-President Joe Biden had signed days earlier, and supporters in the crowd chanted the word back at him. Across his campaigns and both of his terms, that language has reached reporters, rally stages and the White House itself. Leavitt supplied the view from the other side of the podium, indicating the register holds when there is no camera in the room at all.
Life After the Briefing Room
Leavitt left her post August 27, 2026, about two weeks after Trump announced on August 12 that she was leaving. As of September 28, a month later, no replacement press secretary had been named, and briefings have been rare; Vice President JD Vance took the podium on September 3.
The podium made Leavitt a frequent and combative presence during her run as press secretary, and she used part of the Hannity interview to revisit her dealings with the reporters she faced. Some White House correspondents, she said, privately apologized to her for asking what she called “unfair” questions, telling her their bosses had wanted them asked. Her broader message was that the president her critics watch on television is the same man his staff sees in private.
Leavitt is shopping a book about her time as press secretary to publishers, unnamed sources told Page Six Hollywood on September 28. Before leaving the White House, Leavitt said she would return to work for the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. A source familiar with her next steps previously told Fox News Digital she will also “engage in other opportunities yet to be announced.”
An Accidental Instagram Live
On Sunday, September 27, shortly before 2 p.m., Leavitt accidentally began an Instagram Live while lying in bed with her nearly five-month-old daughter, Viviana, and ended it without speaking. A screengrab showed 1,157 viewers. In a follow-up post, she wrote: “Just accidentally went live while trying to edit a reel LOL.”
At the same moment, the White House’s official “TRUMP TV: The Essentials Station” YouTube livestream, launched September 21 with about 8,500 viewers in its first hour, had fallen to 187, the Daily Beast reported.
Press secretaries usually spend their whole tenure managing a principal’s language, sanding down its edges and repackaging an off-color line as candor or strength. Leavitt, no longer in the job, took the shorter route, and the profanity answer was the one that traveled. Not everyone welcomed the candor: after her Starmer story, Newsmax host Greg Kelly accused her of gossiping about private meetings, calling it “A BREACH of Trust.”