CNN clashes built Scott Jennings for the White House briefing room. But is the risk worth the reward?

One of those sources told the Washington Examiner that Jennings was on their short list to replace outgoing press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who earns the federally mandated salary cap of $195,200 for full-time White House employees, even before she announced her decision to spend more time with her young family.

Leavitt gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Viviana, in May.

“It’s all the non-TV stuff that could be either a vulnerability or just something he doesn’t want to do,” the source said of Jennings. “Briefings are maybe once a week. All the other story strategy and random fires is most of the job, which I don’t know he would want to do.” A second source expressed shock to the Washington Examiner that Jennings would “even want” to be press secretary.

But Jennings’s stock has risen amid reports on Thursday that he met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles last weekend and circulated clips of him defending Trump staffer Natalie Harp among his possible colleagues this week.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) appeared to reference an extramarital relationship between Trump and Harp last weekend during a campaign rally.

Some say the role might not be worth the headaches for the well-paid pundit.

“He has more to lose than gain, considering he doesn’t have a well-established relationship with the president,” the source said of Jennings. “There’s a chance he’s there for a few months and the president sours on him and decides he actually wants a woman in the role and discards Scott, and then Scott gave up a CNN contributorship and radio show for what? Sure, he could get them back, but going to work for Trump could harm his image if Trump doesn’t end up liking him.”

But to the source’s point, working for Trump does have its own very specific occupational hazards. For instance, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer had to grapple with the repercussions of his infamous assertion that, during Trump’s first term, the president drew “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”

“If you ask me for one thing that I probably want a do-over on, that’s it,” Spicer told NPR in 2017. “There was nobody happy with me that night.”

The source added that while Jennings “would be great at skewering media behind the podium,” this person was “not sure he has the other credentials to do the job,” including managing reporter relationships or “having the balls to tell Trump ‘no.’”

“From what it sounds like, Karoline did do both of those things,” the source said.

Jennings did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner, but he does have a cordial relationship with Trump. The pair spent time together for the Republican strategist’s book, A Revolution of Common Sense, before it was published last year.

“He’s defending me all the time on CNN,” Trump said of Jennings at a rally in Michigan last year. “He defends me really well, but he can’t go too far because if he goes too far, he’ll get fired.”

Jennings has, however, criticized Trump in the past, even if sparingly. He wrote an op-ed in 2021 contending that the president was responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“President Donald Trump caused this insurrection with his lies and conspiracy theories about the election process being rigged against him,” Jennings wrote for CNN at the time. “I’m ashamed and embarrassed for our country, and for any Republican who fails to condemn this shameful behavior.”

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Still, a third source told the Washington Examiner that Jennings needs to ask himself whether, if he were to become the White House press secretary, he is “going to be in a better spot two years from now.”

“If Scott Jennings wanted to run for office, like with Sarah [Huckabee Sanders], it’s a different conversation,” the source said. “But if you want to be a media commentator, a talking head, for the rest of your life, I don’t know what you really get out of it.”