Trump names Katie Zacharia as next White House press secretary

President Donald Trump has chosen Katie Zacharia, a conservative commentator and lawyer, as the White House’s next press secretary. He announced the appointment on Friday, October 9, in a post on Truth Social, according to NBC News and CBS News. The post has stood empty since Karoline Leavitt’s departure at the end of August.

The decision became public in stages during the day. The New York Times was the first to report that Zacharia had been picked. NBC News then heard from two officials in the White House and one person with knowledge of the choice, and CNBC was told by an official that she had been offered the post, without any word yet on whether she had accepted. Trump’s own announcement settled the question later on Friday. Neither her first day nor other specifics have been made public.

What Trump and Zacharia said

Trump wrote that it was his “Great Honor” to appoint her. He said he was confident she would deliver strong results and would work well with the media, the American people and his administration. He also credited her with helping his campaigns in key swing states and described her as a loyal supporter from the beginning.

Zacharia answered with her own post. She called the appointment “the honor of a lifetime” and said she looked forward to working with the White House press corps and with reporters across the country. She also addressed her predecessor directly: following Leavitt, she wrote, is “a high standard, and one worth meeting.” Trump, for his part, praised Leavitt in the same announcement for her work as press secretary.

Why the timing matters for the White House

The briefing room has been quiet for weeks. According to CBS News, the last briefing there took place on September 3, when Vice President JD Vance took questions from reporters. NBC News adds that Trump has recently complained that his record is being overshadowed ahead of the midterm elections because of weak communications. At an event in the East Room, he admitted he had done a “very bad job” of explaining how well the country is doing.

Leavitt, who went on maternity leave after the birth of her second child earlier this year, is set to join Fox News as an on-air contributor in November, CNBC reports. NBC News says the network announced the hire this week.

Who Zacharia is

Since June, Zacharia has served as senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, CNBC reports, citing her LinkedIn profile. The same profile shows two months as a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, ending in March, and a role as in-house lawyer for Fix California, an activist group on the right that Richard Grenell founded. CNBC identifies Grenell as Trump’s envoy for special missions and an ex-director of the Kennedy Center in Washington.

She is a familiar face on conservative television. NBC News notes that she is a regular guest on Newsmax, Fox News and Fox Business, and says she frequently defends the administration on her X account. CNBC found dozens of talk-show appearances listed on her IMDb page and quotes her describing herself as a “hardline Trump supporter.”

On the personal side, NBC News reports that she is a California resident and a mother of four. CBS News says she completed her undergraduate and law degrees at Pepperdine University in Malibu, based on her LinkedIn page, and NBC News adds that she serves on the dean’s council of Pepperdine’s law school.

CBS News also recalls an op-ed she wrote earlier this year for the New York Post. In it, she described being asked by her gym’s owner to stop wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, an episode she presented as an attack on free speech. CBS adds that the First Amendment protects against government censorship, not against decisions by private businesses.

Featured image. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Credit: Geraldshields11. License: CC BY-SA 4.0.