US president announced departure on social media, saying Leavitt was leaving to ‘spend more time’ with family

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Karoline Leavitt will step down as White House press secretary at the end of August, Donald Trump announced.

The US president revealed her departure on social media, saying Leavitt was leaving “so she can spend more time” with her family. The 28-year-old gave birth to a daughter, Viviana, in May, and returned from maternity leave last month.

Journalists and others were allowed to fly on presidential jet despite security threat while Trump was spirited away

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Democrats called on Tuesday for a congressional briefing over a stunning charade in which Donald Trump was secretly spirited to a different plane than the one the public and press believed he was travelling on. Critics now question why reporters and the public had been deliberately misled.

When US intelligence allegedly found a credible threat that Iran plotted to kill him last month, Trump left Air Force One in a catering truck, an episode first reported by the Washington Post and also by the New York Times. While the president was reportedly snuck out the side door of the plane, more than a hundred aides, officials and reporters were kept onboard to fly towards Britain, without being told there was a threat to their lives.