Geraldo Rivera, the ex-Fox News journalist and veteran media figure, caught many off guard on March 25, 2026, when he used X to share an unprompted endorsement of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“Karoline Leavitt is a terrific White House press secretary, and spokesperson for the president, measured, controlled, informed, competent,” Rivera posted. “Whether you’re right or left, Republican or Democrat you have to appreciate competence and loyalty.”
The statement caused surprise — not just because Rivera shared it without any obvious reason, but because the seasoned reporter has dedicated much of the previous year to openly disagreeing with the Trump administration on multiple critical matters. His unexpected commendation of one of the administration’s most visible figures appeared to many as a dramatic reversal.
The public support is especially notable considering what Rivera had been expressing merely two months before. In January 2026, when fresh mobile phone video surfaced regarding the deadly Minneapolis ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good, Rivera positioned himself firmly in opposition to the administration’s stance. While Leavitt went to social media to proclaim “President Trump was right again” and demanded The New York Times revise its coverage, Rivera shared a strongly worded counterargument.
“I love cops, but they sometimes **** up,” Rivera wrote on X at the time. “The killing of Renee Good was entirely unnecessary. Two middle-aged ladies, talking smack were not the one with a loaded handgun, and a hair trigger. They did not escalate this deadly confrontation that led to the death of this mother of three young children. This is on ICE.”
The difference between that January message and his March praise of Leavitt could hardly be more pronounced. At one moment, Rivera was openly challenging the White House narrative. At another, he was extolling the virtues of the individual presenting that narrative daily from the briefing room lectern.
Rivera’s complex history with the Trump administration extends even earlier. In February 2026, Leavitt personally mentioned Rivera’s name during a press briefing — not as a supporter, but as someone who had wrongly charged the president with racism, referencing his characterization of Trump’s immigration crackdown as “racist government policy.” At that time, Rivera was clearly among Leavitt’s detractors, not admirers.
What prompted the shift? Rivera has provided no clarification for this change. Some commentators have highlighted personal similarities between the pair. Rivera, at 82, is wed to his fifth spouse, Erica Levy, who is 31 years younger than him. Leavitt, 27, is married to a man 30 years her senior. Whether this shared characteristic influenced Rivera’s favorable sentiments remains entirely conjectural, but online audiences took notice.
What cannot be disputed is that Rivera has historically held an atypical position in American media — a self-identified liberal who moved progressively toward the right throughout his Fox News tenure, a one-time Trump associate who sometimes publicly disagreed with him, and a personality that has grown increasingly hard to classify. His March 25 statement follows that trend. It was not a complete endorsement of the administration, but admiration for the individual — and in today’s media environment, the distinction between the two can be narrow.
Leavitt, for her part, has not publicly responded to Rivera’s endorsement. She has had no shortage of other headlines to manage, including ongoing controversies over the administration’s Iran military campaign, confrontations with the press corps, and a separate social media furor over a White House photo she reportedly sought to have removed from news agency archives.
Rivera’s post garnered significant attention online, with many in media circles questioning his motives. For a man who once prided himself on speaking truth to power, endorsing the administration’s chief spokesperson — without prompting, and without conditions — was a move that left even some of his supporters asking the same question: who asked him?
