Leavitt's successor: Trump names Katie Zacharia White House press secretary
The conservative commentator and California lawyer is to take over the White House podium, vacant for weeks. Trump praises her “unblemished” record of support.
Symbolic image · Photo: CabbageFuel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
U.S. President Donald Trump has named conservative commentator Katie Zacharia as the new White House press secretary. He announced the appointment on Friday. Trump praised her “unblemished record of support” and called her a “loyal and brilliant supporter”. Zacharia succeeds Karoline Leavitt, who left the administration at the end of August after the birth of her second child.
Zacharia is a California lawyer who has appeared as a commentator on outlets including Fox News and CNN. Since June she has been a senior communications adviser to Trump's media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, according to Ynetnews. In February she became spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security but left after about six weeks – she cited the strain that travel between California and Washington placed on her family, while other reports pointed to internal political tensions, which she denied. During the 2024 campaign she worked to mobilise Arab American voters in Dearborn, Michigan.
The post had been vacant for almost two months. The last formal White House briefing took place on 3 September, when Vice President JD Vance took questions from reporters, Ynetnews reported. The appointment comes in the final stretch of the campaign before the 3 November midterm elections.