Karoline Leavitt, who has been trending all week courtesy her unflattering Vanity Fair cover shot, just attempted a little damage control of sorts. The White House Press Secretary shared a series of brand-new pictures and she labeled them behind-the-scenes.
Karoline Leavitt, on her Instagram profile, posted pictures taken from far away during the Vanity Fair shoot and she captioned the post, “Behind the scenes before a live interview on the North Lawn of the White House, captured by Anna Moneymaker.”
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Much to Karoline Leavitt’s dismay, the Internet wasn’t too impressed with her not-so-subtle attempt to replace the original picture from the Vanity Fair shoot, which had a super tight close-up, zooming in on her alleged lip fillers.
Meanwhile, in the comments section of Karoline Leavitt’s Instagram post, users slammed her new and not-so-candid photo dump. “Super zoom out so now one can see the hideousness,” an Instagram user wrote. Another one wrote, “You had someone take your photo at a distance through a slotted object and called it behind the scenes? Nice try, Karoline.”
A third, questioned, “Why are these shots taken at such a distance? Why not get a close-up?” Some even suggested Karoline Leavitt to zoom in a bit, similar to the one that Vanity Fair originally posted. “Zoom in,” a netizen commented.
Needless to say, Karoline’s latest Instagram entry did not go down well with some Internet users. One of them, for instance, wrote, “You should probably hire a new lip filler person.” Another one commented, “We know what Photoshop is, ma’am.”
Some users mentioned that they actually preferred the picture of Karoline that Vanity Fair posted, as it was more authentic. “Vanity Fair got her hitting the filters hard,” read a comment on the post. Another one jokingly added, “Live, laugh, lie.”
A section of the Internet could just see through Karoline’s attempt to share picture-perfect clicks, taken from far away, and calling them behind-the-scenes. “How embarrassing this all is for you,” read inputs from a user. Echoing similar thoughts as above, a user wrote, “Why so far away?” Flagging similar issues with the post, another one wrote, “Honey, these filtered and distanced shots aren’t convincing anyone.”
Let’s just say the chatter around the pictures was not dying anytime soon. “Had to take those pics from far away to hide the lip injection sites huh,” a curious user asked, referring to the latest photos shared by Karoline. Another one added, “Turns out this is not what you really look like LOL.”
In case you missed the aforementioned picture of Karoline Leavitt, Vanity Fair recently did a profile on Donald Trump’s staff. However, it was eclipsed by a super-tight close-up of Leavitt. The Internet couldn’t help but troll the White House Press Secretary over her alleged cosmetic enhancements, mainly lip fillers.
Sharing this close-up picture of Karoline Leavitt on social media, Vanity Fair wrote, “How’s Karoline Leavitt faring in the onslaught of questions about the Epstein files? “It’s pretty clear he wants us to be aggressively offensive when it comes to this issue.”
How’s Karoline Leavitt faring in the onslaught of questions about the Epstein files? “It’s pretty clear he wants us to be aggressively offensive when it comes to this issue.”https://t.co/4eezfCsLap pic.twitter.com/2JGVlODcln
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) December 16, 2025
Meanwhile, photographer Christopher Anderson, in an interaction with The Independent, explained why all White House portraits were zoomed in. “Very close-up portraiture has been a fixture in a lot of my work over the years. Particularly, political portraits that I’ve done over the years. I like the idea of penetrating the theater of politics,” he said.
Anderson continued, “I know there’s a lot to be made with, ‘Oh, he intentionally is trying to make people look bad’ and that kind of thing – that’s not the case. If you look at my photograph work, I’ve done a lot of close-ups in the same style with people of all political stripes.”
