‘It’s Not a Happy White House’: Maggie Haberman Claims ‘Most’ of Trump’s Staff Wants to Leave

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said President Donald Trump’s staff is not “happy” with behind the scenes chaos and some may follow the example of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and seek the exits.

Haberman joined MS NOW’s Peter Alexander on State of Play on Thursday and revealed her own reporting has revealed Trump “lashing out” behind the scenes at staffers.

Alexander asked specifically about Leavitt, who worked her last day Thursday in her role as White House press secretary. Leavitt has said she is leaving to focus more time on family after her second child was born in May. She will remain an outside advisor for Trump.

Haberman, author of the Regime Change, a behind the scenes look at Trump entering his second White House term, noted that staff turnover has been far lower than Trump’s first term and questioned how much a press secretary leaving matters when Trump often describes himself as his own press secretary.

Haberman said:

It’s funny, there’s been so little turnover this term compared to the last term. It gets easy to forget how sort of quick that revolving door was last time. As you say, this is a timing thing in a lot of ways. The midterm cycles are often when people leave, they do see dwindling opportunities.

They do want to go out, but it’s not…based on on our reporting, Peter, and I suspect this matches yours, it’s not a happy White House. You know, the president is — we don’t spend as much time this term as we did in term one on the constant Trump mood beat. There’s not a lot of conversations about this time, which is a good thing. It was too much time spent, but he is not in a great place with his staff, according to everyone we talked to. He is lashing out a lot, which tends to happen when things are not going well.

Most people have decided that that they want to go do something else. That’s not everybody and there will be other people who come in. But, you know, I would say in terms of Karoline Leavitt, she had his trust in a way that most people did not in term one who served in that role, the press secretary job. He considers himself his own press secretary, and he’s pretty honest about that. So I’m not sure, what does it matter? I mean, someone will come and they’ll come to the briefing podium and, obviously, I would much rather somebody briefing the public, but if you’re not getting information, then it’s a show.

Leavitt said in her last official interview as press secretary, which was with Fox News, that Trump was warned she was too young to serve as press secretary. She became the youngest press secretary in history at the age of 27 in January 2025.

“So many people told him when he was considering me for his job after of course I worked for him on his historic 2024 campaign that I was too young and he ignored the doubters and gave me a chance and I’m forever grateful to him for that,” Levitt said.

Watch above via MS NOW.

Jason Cohen contributed to this report. 

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