Hogan Gidley, a deputy press secretary from Trump’s first term, told the Washington Examiner that he thinks Leavitt’s been among the top performers of all of Trump’s press secretaries, in terms of meeting the expectations handed down by the president directly. Gidley said he had no insight into who Trump may be considering but added that he is “apt to believe that past is prologue.”

“Everyone floating a Scott Jennings or a Jason Miller, those people just aren’t paying attention,” a longtime adviser to the president suggested Friday. “It’s going to be a woman. Easy money bet.”

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Unconfirmed competitors for the role being floated include current top communications officials within federal offices. White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, Leavitt’s second-in-command, has represented the White House increasingly on television and radio. Kingsley Wilson, the War Department press secretary, has also been floated as she, like Leavitt, was the youngest appointed to her position.

Furthermore, four other former senior Trump White House officials told the Washington Examiner that the president prefers female press secretaries because they’re better on television than their male counterparts and that he flat out “trusts women more.”

One senior aide who worked in Trump’s told the Washington Examiner that former Saturday Night Live star Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal of Spicer on the weekly sketch comedy show particularly annoyed Trump.

“Optics are part of it,” that person said. “Look, I like Sean. I’m friends with Sean. He’s a great dude. He was portrayed by a woman on SNL. That didn’t sit well with the president. Again, not Sean’s fault. It just didn’t sit well.”

“He thinks [women] are more effective, I think when it comes to the style he wants out of the press secretary,” a first-term senior communications aide added. “When they’re berating the media, I think it comes off a little bit better, maybe coming from a woman. We’ve seen it not be as effective coming from a man.”

Another former top aide, who has worked for Trump both in the White House and on the campaign trail, believes that it has been a “conscious choice” from the president to have women leading both the press shop and, in the case of chief of staff Susie Wiles, the entire White House apparatus.

“All of his choices are conscious,” the former staffer said. “He’s thinking through a whole panoply of factors. Gender is most certainly one of those. Think about this — first president in history to have two female campaign managers. The first to have a woman chief of staff. He’s put three mothers behind the podium. There’s a pattern here.”

“He has a tendency to distrust men, and maybe it’s because he feels they’re jockeying for angles and trying to take him down a peg, where his female aides aren’t doing that,” that person added.

However, Thomas Whalen, a presidential historian at Boston University, told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s proclivity for female press secretaries “betrays a certain sexual bias” and that the president views “women as ornaments for the administration.”

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“It strikes me as being cynical,” he said in an interview. “Where can we put a woman to deflect charges of sexism? Well, put them in communications. They’re awfully good at that. They’re empaths.”

“Trump always wants someone good-looking, articulate in front of the cameras, and he is kind of like a television director,” Whalen continued. “He’s kind of using PR gamesmanship. It’s always better to have a woman do the talking when dealing with the Washington press corps than say a guy like Scott Jennings.”