5 Times Karoline Leavitt's Tan Fails Were Almost Worse Than Trump's
As White House press secretary, it's clear that Karoline Leavitt is committed to getting Donald Trump's approval. She always supports the president and goes to bat in defense of his decisions regularly. We would think this would be enough to get Trump on her side, but on occasion, Leavitt has seemingly attempted to impress him with their shared love of the same hobby: getting tan. Okay, okay — Leavitt is probably not actually taking her tan inspiration from Trump. But that doesn't mean she's not giving the notoriously badly bronzed political figure a run for his money every now and then.
Leavitt has certainly had a White House makeover since joining Trump's administration. She falls victim to the "Republican makeup" trend cliche occasionally, she dresses way older than she is, and some folks have speculated she's even gotten plastic surgery. Still, looking at older photos of Leavitt, it seems like she has always struggled to get the perfect tan. From tan lines to uneven color and even a familiar orange hue, Leavitt's tan fails are all over the map, and we've got some of the particularly bad ones she's sported over the years.
When her hands were a dead giveaway
Fake tan fans know that paying attention to your hands is key to a successful all-over glow. Karoline Leavitt posted a series of photos on Instagram showing off her and her baby in celebration of Valentine's Day 2025. In one of the two photos, she lifted her son up to give him a kiss on the cheek. Unfortunately, this draws attention to the fact that Leavitt's hand is a lot paler than her face.
It's easy to apply fake tan everywhere and neglect your hands — especially since many people wear gloves or mitts to avoid getting the ever-undesirable orange palms that can come with an unprotected self-tanning session. In the case of Leavitt's fake tan faux pas, however, this may be a result of the wrong makeup color rather than a bad fake tan. It's easy to see that the press secretary has heavily contoured her face, which may have resulted in a bronzer overload that looks very different from the bare skin on her hands.
When her face never got the tan memo
From a time when Karoline Leavitt's makeup made her look much tanner than she actually was to — well, the exact opposite. Long before she became the U.S.'s youngest-ever press secretary, Leavitt was already celebrating holidays in the White House. In December 2020, she posted a photo of herself wearing a body-hugging red sparkly dress on Instagram. She captioned the pic, "A White House Christmas." Leavitt is nearly unrecognizable in many of her throwback photos, and this is certainly one of them. Yet, despite this photo clearly being taken before Leavitt's new White House-ready look, it seems that she had already mastered the tan fail.
Leavitt is particularly tan in this photo, but that might not have looked quite so out of place if it wasn't for how light her face looked. This is likely due to mismatched makeup. This may have been the foundation color she typically sported when she didn't have such an intense tan. Regardless of why, though, Leavitt's face and body are two distinctly different shades. And, that just isn't a good look.
Her tan that missed her forearms
Whether you're rocking a real tan or one from a bottle, one of the easiest ways for your tan to be especially obvious is if it is uneven. It's already clear this is one of the main reasons why Karoline Leavitt's tan typically looks off. In July 2024, we saw another example of unevenness when Leavitt showed off her then-2-week-old baby. In the photo she posted to Instagram, Leavitt's forearms were front and center in the photo, since he was holding both her baby and her phone up for a mirror selfie. That showed just how much lighter her lower arms were than her upper body.
In Leavitt's defense, this tan looks a lot more like a real tan from time in the sun than some of her other, faker-looking tans. And, we can understand why an uneven tan and tan lines aren't always easy to avoid. But, that doesn't mean it's not at least a little bit distracting in photos.
When her neck was left out of the sun
In July 2023, Karoline Leavitt shared two photos of her during an appearance on Newsmax on Instagram. And, once again, Leavitt had a seriously uneven tan. In the first photo, it was easy to see how her particularly sun-kissed arms and face didn't match her neck. The second photo in the carousel showed her sitting in the makeup chair getting ready for her TV appearance. This gave us a view of Leavitt's legs, which also lacked the bronzed look of the rest of her.
Based on the look of her tan and where on her body she wasn't quite as tan, this seems like another situation in which Leavitt actually got a natural tan from being out in the sun. It's easy to understand how a bad tan like this one happened, but if you're going to be out tanning, it's important to try to get the same color all over as well as you can.
When the shade of her tan was all wrong
Most of us can agree that there are many different things wrong with Donald Trump's typical tan. The biggest problem, however, has to be the particularly unnatural shade of tan he loves to don. While Karoline Leavitt certainly knows a thing or two about a bad tan, she doesn't typically share her boss' orange hue. In September 2024, however, Leavitt attended the presidential debate wearing her team's colors. In the photo from Instagram, she had an orange-ish tan that, like Trump's, didn't really resemble anyone's natural skin tone.
Over the years, there have been plenty of occasions when Leavitt's tan looked very different on different areas of her body. Yet, photos from the debate show a reasonably even tan. The problem here was the hue, which leads us to believe that this was, in fact, a fake tan. Since Leavitt had this particular tan, she's spent a lot more time around Trump, so when it comes to fake tans it's possible that she has learned from the best about what not to do.