President Donald Trump’s new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia held an unusually short first briefing with the media Tuesday, concluding after less than 15 minutes and calling on just three reporters, all from conservative outlets.
The press secretary spent more than half of that time reading remarks before taking questions from Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail.
In response to the Daily Mail, she also revealed that the administration has asked Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, to resign following allegations of misconduct.
Zacharia spent most of her remarks touting the president’s policies and framed her new position as a job to “amplify” the president, something she said she’d done as a conservative commentator. She referenced those appearances, telling reporters on Tuesday that she hopes to “take that into an official capacity.”
Now, Zacharia said, she hopes to “only build on, only amplify, and only multiply, to the extent possible, all of the wins” that Trump is “making for Americans, for Americans to understand how much has changed in this brief period of time, what he’s been able to accomplish.”
“My goal is to be able to communicate that in complete tandem with the president, as he is his own best spokesperson, and will absolutely be leading the way with that,” she added.
Asked by Fox News whether the U.S. has stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, she said she would “have to get back to you on that.”
She did, though, address her views on the shifting media landscape and discuss balancing her family life in response to other questions.
She said she wanted to “expand” on the new media seat “to the extent possible,” referencing her predecessor, Karoline Leavitt’s, decision to include a seat in the briefing room for non-traditional media. Breitbart held the seat on Tuesday.
Leavitt departed the administration in August to “spend more time with her beautiful young children and family” Trump said. Asked about balancing the job with her own family in California, Zacharia said her husband and four children are moving to the Washington-area.
“I adore my family. I love them. They are my priority,” she said. “I love being with my kids. The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable.”
The president announced on Friday that he was tapping Zacharia to fill the position. She had served as a senior communications adviser for Trump Media & Technology Group.
She is stepping into the role as the top White House spokesperson in the final weeks before midterm elections, as the president is embarking on a series of campaign trips to shore up his base.
At the same time, voters are souring on the president’s performance, which Trump has chalked up to a public relations issue. Last month, an NBC News poll found that 41% of registered voters approved of the president’s performance, a second-term low.
The same poll found that voters largely disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy. The administration hasn’t shown a path to ending the war in Iran, which has raised fuel prices and contributed to inflation. And in recent days, some Republican candidates in battleground races are breaking with the president on his handling of tariffs and the Iran war.
Trump said during a recent rally in Oklahoma that the administration is “not doing a good job of public relations.” At a separate event, he said that the administration was “doing an extremely poor job of promotion,” despite doing an “extremely great job of running the country.”
In a Fox News interview over the weekend, Zacharia said she was looking forward to “working for President Trump,” adding, “this job is not about me.”
“This job is about him and how he wants to communicate to the American people,” she said on Saturday.
She lavished praise on the president’s policies and performance, calling him “the most energetic, intense president we have ever seen.” In the interview, she also touted the president’s controversial ballroom project, which has become a signature part of his physical transformation of the White House.
Zacharia said that Trump showed her the ballroom site when she visited the White House on Friday.
“Just to see this vision he has for building, but also for America and the greatness that America has and has always had and that he’s bringing back — I can’t wait to work for President Trump on Monday,” she said in the Fox News interview.
Leave a Reply