Katie Zacharia's Rocky Debut: New White House Press Secretary Wraps First Briefing After Just 14 Minutes
Katie Zacharia took the podium for the first time as White House press secretary on Tuesday — and if you blinked, you might have missed it. The new spokeswoman ended her debut briefing after just 14 minutes, taking questions from only three reporters before abruptly walking out.
The 41-year-old conservative commentator, whom President Donald Trump named to the job on Friday, opened her first session in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room with roughly eight minutes of prepared remarks praising the "energetic" president. She rattled off claims of record rally attendance and positive data on wage gains, drug prices, jobs and energy production.
That left about six minutes for questions. Zacharia called only on reporters from three conservative-leaning outlets — Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail — before announcing she was done.
"In fact, I am going to end it because President Trump is heading out to Marine One for our historic trip to Alaska, and we can ask him all of the questions out there," she said. Trump did not actually depart for his trip until more than an hour later.
The briefing did produce real news: Zacharia announced that the White House had asked U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign, following Wall Street Journal reporting that Guilfoyle had solicited $100,000 from a Trump donor ahead of her confirmation hearing.
Trump personally watched the debut and later told reporters: "I thought she did excellent. She did very good."
Critics were less kind. Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki called it "basically an SNL skit…except it wasn't," while conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly said the first briefing "did not go particularly well" but stressed Zacharia has room to improve. Former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted 11 days in 2017, wrote: "The clock is running. Thus far 1/11th of a Scaramucci."
Zacharia succeeds Karoline Leavitt, who left the job in August and is taking a role with Fox News. An attorney by training with a law degree from Pepperdine University, Zacharia briefly served as a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson earlier this year and has been a senior communications advisor at Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social. She is the seventh woman in a row to serve as White House press secretary.
She steps into one of Washington's toughest jobs just three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, with Trump's poll numbers at historic lows amid an unpopular war and rising gas prices. Asked how she would balance the job with family life, Zacharia — a mother of four children, ages 6 to 12 — said her family will relocate from California to Washington and that her kids will "always be a priority."
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