For over fifty years, Donald Trump has played a complex game with the media, often keeping journalists on their toes. However, there have been recent signs suggesting a shift towards a more harmonious relationship.

Trump’s journey from a publicity-seeking real estate mogul in New York City to a political figure has always been intertwined with media attention. His flair for headlines and controversy has kept him in the public eye, a fact Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt highlighted during an interview in her West Wing office. She noted, “Donald Trump was captivating the press long before he became President Trump. He has graced the front pages of more magazines than nearly anyone else in American history.”

Even after descending from the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his presidential bid, Trump remains a towering figure in politics. His interactions with the press have evolved from heated exchanges with personalities like former CNN host Jim Acosta to moments of levity and even commendation during his Oval Office sessions.

Leavitt observed a notable change in media dynamics between Trump’s first and second terms. She remarked to the Daily Mail, “What has caught us by surprise is the shift in the tone of the legacy media. It’s less vicious now than during his first term.”

During an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Leavitt, a member of Generation Z, discussed these changes while seated comfortably in a dark-wood armchair. The setting was quintessentially Trump, complete with his trademark Diet Coke nearby, a colorful Stanley tumbler, and a table strewn with printed articles. Several screens displayed muted cable news channels, providing a backdrop to the conversation.

The Gen-Z press secretary perched on a dark-wood armchair, surrounded by her boss’s signature Diet Coke within arm’s reach, a colorful Stanley tumbler with straw, printed articles scattered across the conference table and silent cable news channels flickering across multiple screens, sat for an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail. 

The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room—silent as a morgue under Joe Biden—has become the center of attention under Leavitt’s command. 

Fresh from another combative briefing, the 28-year-old Leavitt has transformed the space into a war room, fully embracing Trump’s pugilistic relationship with the press and regularly going toe-to-toe with media titans from behind the podium. 

The 79-year-old president has been in the national spotlight since the 1970s. Since then the businessman and former ‘Apprentice’ host has developed a relationship with many media outlets. He’s watched the media ‘evolve’ over the last half century, his Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Mail 

Leavitt told the Daily Mail this picture of the president and the media encapsulates the pair’s relationship well

‘I’m always reminded that Donald Trump was spinning up the press long before he was ever President Trump,’ Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reflected, sitting for an exclusive interview in her West Wing office

While the president is enjoying a seemingly more relaxed relationship with the media he used to spar with regularly, Leavitt, a sworn enemy of the ‘fake news’, has become the battle-tested bad cop ready to take on the press.

‘He really introduced this reality to the American public that you can’t always trust what you read,’ Leavitt said. ‘He’s been doing this longer than I’ve been alive.’

But now the torrent of sparring that defined the first term has been layered with complimenting reporters’ good looks and joking with them during his second.

There’s also been a notable temperature shift on the media’s part.  

Having served nearly two years as the president’s spokeswoman, first during his 2024 campaign and now at the White House, Leavitt, a mother of one, couldn’t help but reflect on the change in tune.

‘I think back to the way some of the White House press corps treated Sarah Huckabee Sanders or my old boss, Kayleigh McEnany,’ she said of the two former press secretaries who worked during Trump’s first term. 

Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, served as Trump’s first-term press secretary from 2017-2019 and regularly got in heated back-and-forths with the media. 

‘Where does it say in the Bible that it’s moral to take children away from their mothers?’ Acosta asked Sanders in a fiery 2018 briefing room exchange, referring to Trump’s immigration policies. 

Reporters and photographers work as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, October 16, 2025, in Washington

Since Trump came to political power, trust in the media has tanked, multiple surveys show. He is the driving force behind America’s increasing skepticism in the press, Leavitt suggested 

‘That’s not what I said,’ Sanders responded at the time. ‘I know it’s hard for you to understand even short sentences, I guess, but please don’t take my words out of context.’

Huckabee told the Daily Mail she wasn’t surprised that another working mother is ‘thriving in this role …. with grit and grace.’ 

In the early months of the president’s second term, the press seems to have mellowed out.

‘They are definitely more respectful of the president this term, because they realize not only did the American people elect him here once, but twice,’ said Leavitt.

After the 2024 election, ‘they were forced to take a cold, hard look in the mirror,’ Leavitt said of the media, noting how a major shift in tone began soon after the results were tallied.

For example, MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski flocked to Mar-a-Lago soon after Trump’s victory last year to ‘reset’ relations. 

President Donald Trump visits the press aboard Air Force One on an October trip to Asia. Trump later thanked the media for their conduct on his trip to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping

Microphones loom over Trump, his Cabinet members and NATO officials during an Oval Office press availability

CBS News settled a lawsuit with Trump, and its new leadership is seen as more friendly towards the administration. 

To see signs of improving relations, just look at how frequently the press gets invited into the seat of global power, the Oval Office.

The increasingly emblazoned in gold executive office has been a weekly stop for reporters, photographers, camera guys and more during the president’s second term.

Trump is on record to have more exchanges with the press this year than any year in history under any president, according to the American Presidency Project. 

Currently on track to have 350 exchanges with the press this year, the record is held by Bill Clinton, who had 245 press exchanges in 1993.

‘He gives the press more access than any president ever has, but he’s also, again, not afraid to call out the fake news when he sees it,’ Leavitt said. ‘I mean, you see, he’s doing a press event almost every day, and if he’s not, then I’m expected to go out and do a press briefing myself.’ 

Still, despite his accessibility, the president and his allies have publicly feuded with the same large media companies they have sought to amend relationships with.

The AP was banned from certain events in February for not recognizing Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of America; the White House and Republicans in Congress worked to defund NPR and PBS this year; and the president has settled cases with CBS, ABC and, perhaps soon, the BBC.

Trump speaking with Joe Rogan on the comedian’s podcast during the 2024 election

Trump is embroiled in more defamation lawsuits this year than he was last year, according to an Axios analysis. The president has won around $32 million in damages over defamation suits filed against CBS and ABC this year alone. 

Critics of the president say his pursuit of the media stifles speech and scares the press, but his press secretary is adamant that the administration calls balls and strikes.

‘When he feels like the press are doing a fair job and a decent job, he says it, and he said that publicly in Asia when he thanked the press for covering the trip well,’ she said, noting how the president recently applauded the US media for its conduct on his high-stakes trip to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a whirlwind trip last month.

Trump also privately thanks select members of the press.

‘He sends notes to reporters who write an accurate story and says, “Thank you for actually writing the facts,’” Leavitt said. 

But he’ll never abandon his trademark – branding articles he doesn’t like as ‘fake news.’ 

And that habit has taken a toll.

Trust in information published by national news organizations among US adults has plummeted over the last ten years from 76 percent to 56 percent, a recent Pew Research survey found.

A Gallup Survey from last year found that only 31 percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in the mass media, a historic low for the poll that has run since 1972. A majority, 36 percent of the respondents, said they had no trust at all in the mass media.

Trust in media across surveys has been consistently slipping in recent years, and much of that can be credited to Trump’s resistance against the press, Leavitt said.

‘He will also have a conversation with any reporter, no matter how many lies and fake stories they’ve written about him,’ she added.