Vanity Fair is at it again—and this time, the glossy liberal magazine appears to have crossed a line even by its own standards.
In a much-criticized profile of the Trump administration published Tuesday, the magazine ran an extreme close-up photograph of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that many saw as intentionally unflattering, awkward, and oddly edited. The image immediately set off alarms inside the West Wing and ignited backlash across America.
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
The White House did not mince words.
“It’s clear that Vanity Fair intentionally photographed Karoline and the White House staff in bizarre ways, and deliberately edited the photos, to try to demean and embarrass them,” a White House spokesperson told the Daily Mail.
The spokesperson wasn’t done.
“Karoline is a beautiful person and truly one of the most incredible people you will meet in politics, and she is doing an extraordinary job serving the American people as the White House Press Secretary.”
Observers quickly noticed what looked like aggressive editing choices: contrast cranked up, lighting harshly exaggerated, and the camera pushed in so tight that every pore and line was impossible to miss. Critics say the goal was obvious—zoom in, magnify imperfections, and manufacture ridicule.
They turned up the contrast to accentuate wrinkles and pores. They zoomed in to make sure viewers saw every perceived imperfection. The result? A photo so overworked it bordered on parody. If the intent was subtlety, Vanity Fair failed spectacularly.
Leavitt herself responded not with outrage—but with receipts.
The press secretary posted behind-the-scenes photos from the White House, offering a glimpse of what the moment actually looked like before the magazine’s editorial scalpel went to work. The contrast between reality and Vanity Fair’s final product spoke volumes.
Still, photographer Christopher Anderson stood by his work, telling Newsweek, “Style is for others to judge.”
“My objective, when photographing the political world, is to make photographs that cut through the staged-managed image to reveal something more real, and for the images to honestly portray the encounter that I had at that moment,” Anderson said. “Being very close is part of how I have been doing this for many years now.”
Anderson also pushed back against criticism that he failed to retouch the image.
“Some on the internet have expressed shock that I chose not to retouch blemishes, injection marks, wrinkles, etc. From my perspective, it should be shocking if I did indeed retouch these things out.”
He echoed that defense in comments to The Independent.
“Very close-up portraiture has been a fixture in a lot of my work over the years,” Anderson said. “Particularly, political portraits that I’ve done over the years. I like the idea of penetrating the theater of politics.”
“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,” he added. “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.”
But critics weren’t buying it—especially given Vanity Fair’s long history of hostility toward Trump-aligned figures.
The photo controversy wasn’t the only reason conservatives were fuming. The article itself drew fire for what the White House and allies described as misleading, out-of-context quotes—particularly comments attributed to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles that many felt were framed to provoke outrage rather than inform readers.
Once again, the mask slipped—and America noticed.
