Steve Bannon suggests White House press secretary could soon take on a cabinet role

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has been tipped to become Donald Trump’s chief of staff.

Mrs Leavitt could soon be made the most powerful woman in the White House, Steve Bannon, a close ally of the president has predicted.

“After she’s spokesman for a year or two, I think she’s going to get a cabinet position. Maybe chief of staff,” he told Politico.

“She had a lot of rough edges. But she learned the lesson Andrew Breitbart did when he first started. He would do the most obscure talk radio in Montana and Wyoming — just do reps.”

Mr Bannon, founded the conservative news outlet Breitbart News.

Mrs Leavitt, got her first taste of the White House with an internship at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building mailroom, later becoming assistant press secretary in the first Trump administration.

Her direct and confident manner have led her to become regarded as one of the sharpest members in Mr Trump’s team.

“She’s very effective at driving their message across as they want to drive it. She has a confidence and a bearing that I think has been useful from their point of view,” Peter Baker, the New York Times’ chief White House correspondent, said.

“They don’t even view the briefing room as a way to shape reporters’ stories. They view the briefing room as a theatre for the Maga audience.”

Mrs Leavitt is said to be open to the idea but has conceded she is not yet qualified to be chief of staff, a family member of the press secretary told Politico.

Her pithy retorts to journalists from Left-wing media organisations have made her a hero among Mr Trump’s supporters.

The US president himself strongly backs Ms Leavitt, a former Republican Congressional candidate, and last month praised her for “knocking them dead”.