Katie Zacharia led her first press briefing Tuesday, Oct. 13, as the new White House press secretary, vowing to amplify President Donald Trump’s political wins and heaping praise on his record. Roughly half of the briefing was devoted to reading out Trump’s achievements, and she described Trump as an energetic president with historic policy decisions while saying people are showing up in droves to his campaign rallies as he adds stops in a midterm blitz.
Zacharia took questions from three media outlets — Fox News, NewsNation and Breitbart — and confirmed that the White House has asked U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign. She did not answer when asked whether the United States has stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine.
Zacharia succeeds Karoline Leavitt, who resigned in August and has since agreed to join Fox News as a host beginning next month. The new press secretary is a former conservative political commentator and communications adviser for Truth Social, President Trump’s social media company, who previously served a brief stint as spokesperson for former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and says she is an attorney though there is no evidence she has been licensed to practice law.
She is in her second day on the job with the midterm elections just three weeks away as high consumer prices and the Iran war loom over the contests where Trump and Republicans seek to maintain a majority in Congress. Several claims from the briefing were described as disputable or unfounded, including that Trump is the first president to lower prescription drug prices despite the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act negotiating lower prices on some of the most expensive drugs and placing limits on costs, and that Trump delivered a historically strong economy compared with former President Joe Biden, whose administration posted greater average job growth per month and lowered unemployment from the 6.4% rate when he took office; the latest consumer price index showed annual inflation at 3.4%, higher than wage growth at 3.1%, after inflation accelerated under Trump and the Federal Reserve increased benchmark interest rates for the first time since 2023.