Katie Zacharia will appear in the White House briefing room on Tuesday morning for the first time as President Donald Trump’s press secretary. She plans to stick around.
She told Secrets that she intends to stay in the role until the end of the president’s term, which is more than two years away and would beat the previous record for a press secretary under Trump.
Zacharia is due to take the briefing room podium at 9:30 a.m., barely 24 hours after starting work in the West Wing, and four days after being named as Karoline Leavitt’s replacement.
That meant a busy weekend packing at her home in California before flying into Washington on Sunday evening, and meeting her new team first thing on Monday.
After fielding journalists’ questions on her second day, she is due to fly with Trump to Alaska for a campaign rally.
“I hit the ground running. I hit the ground at a critical time, a crucial time. I’m here to work. I’m here to put my head down,” she said at the end of her first day.
Her busy TV schedule and fierce loyalty caught the president’s eye in recent weeks and she was the only serious contender for the role, as Secrets revealed on Monday.
The 41 year old joins from Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, where she was a communications adviser. Before that, she had a stint at the Department of Homeland Security as a spokeswoman.
In that role, she was allowed to split her time between Washington and working remotely in California.
This time around she is house hunting in the Washington, D.C., area so that she can go home to her husband Tyler and four children at the end of long pressure-packed days.
Zacharia said she fully intended to stay in the role until Trump’s term finished. That would see her in the role into January 2029, surpassing Sarah Sanders’s time of almost two years in the job.
That is a long way off. For now, she said her priorities were simply to serve the president, starting with the November elections.
“I’m here to serve him for the midterms. So it’s not about my priorities,” she said.
“It’s his priorities, which are the midterms and getting deals done for America. However I can amplify that is my priority.”
Tuesday will be her first chance to meet the wider press corps and defend the president’s record.
it could not come at a tougher time.
Polls suggest the president’s party is on course to lose not just the House of Representatives but the Senate too; the president’s personal ratings are in the doldrums; she will face tough questions about Trump’s foreign policy priorities, from how to end the war in Iran to his decision to buy diesel from Russia; the legal battle with CNN, MS Now, and Politico about access to the White House campus.
“The work ahead is to continue delivering strong results for our Country and communicating to the American people the major wins that this Administration is making every single day,” Zacharia posted on X after her new role was announced.
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