President Donald Trump announced Friday that Katie Zacharia, a conservative commentator and communications adviser for his media company, will serve as the next White House press secretary. The appointment places Zacharia, who has no prior experience at the briefing room podium, at the center of the administration’s public messaging operation ahead of next month’s midterm congressional elections.
Trump announced the decision on his Truth Social platform, where he described Zacharia as ‘a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning’ and ‘a devoted fan and member of MAGA’. She succeeds Karoline Leavitt, who left the position in August and has reportedly taken a job with Fox News.
Zacharia currently serves as a senior communications adviser to Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates Truth Social. She briefly worked as a spokesperson and deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security from February to March 2026.
A brief tenure in government
Zacharia’s government experience is limited. She joined the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year under then-Secretary Kristi Noem but departed after approximately two months. She later said she left because of the strain of travel between California and Washington on her family.
A lawyer educated at Pepperdine University in California, Zacharia, 42, has four children. She previously worked as general counsel for Fix California, a conservative nonprofit founded by Trump ally Ric Grenell, who serves as special presidential envoy for special missions.
Zacharia has been active in Republican politics since her youth. She interned for the Republican National Committee and worked at the White House Office of Political Affairs during the Bush administration in 2006. In 2011, she spent nearly two years clerking at a law firm in Beijing, China.
Trump said Zacharia had been involved in his presidential campaigns, assisting in key swing states.
Resurfaced comments draw scrutiny
Zacharia’s past statements on social media and in interviews have drawn renewed attention following her appointment. In November 2025, she posted a claim linking the abortion pill mifepristone, formerly called RU-486, to the manufacturer of Zyklon B, the gas used in Nazi concentration camps.
Zacharia wrote that mifepristone ‘is connected to the manufacturer of the deadly gas Zyklon B, used in the World War II concentration camps’. She further stated that ‘Zyklon-B was originally used as a pesticide and marketed by the German Corporation for Pest Control, now known as Detia Degesch GmbH’.
The claim has been disputed. Mifepristone was invented in the 1980s by French pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf and was approved for use in 1988. The company was acquired by Hoechst AG in 1997, nearly a decade after the drug’s approval. French biochemist Étienne-Émile Baulieu, a former member of the French Resistance during World War II, is credited as the ‘father’ of the abortion pill for his work on RU-486.
Zacharia also serves on the board of advisors for The White Rose Resistance, an anti-abortion advocacy group founded by Seth Gruber. During a June 2025 appearance on the We The People with Gates Garcia YouTube channel, she said, ‘Being on Seth Gruber’s White Rose board is just an extension of my passion to see him be able to kind of cut through the culture war and get right to the heart of depopulation efforts of abortion, that the racist background of abortion, you know the abortion pill has the same chemicals that they used in the exterminate camps in Nazi Germany’.
X added a disclaimer to the video stating that Nazi gas chambers used hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide, while abortion pills contain neither.
Zacharia has also promoted other unverified claims. She spread an inaccurate statement that ‘8 in 10 women had a miscarriage after getting the COVID vaccine’ and called Bill Gates ‘a eugenicist’ who ‘was pushing for everyone to get a toxic jab’.
Comments on Zelenskyy and Fox News appearances
As a frequent commentator on Fox News and Newsmax, Zacharia has made numerous television appearances defending Trump and his policies. In a June interview with the BBC, she dismissed criticism of Trump’s use of the White House to host a televised UFC fight, saying the principles of the UFC ‘are the kind of principles that founded our Constitutional Republic’.
‘It’s about not giving up the fight until the bitter end,’ she said. ‘I think there’s no better summation of the American ethos than a good UFC fight’.
Earlier this year, Zacharia wrote an op-ed in the New York Post about an incident in which she was asked to stop wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat to her local gym. ‘I responded that I would never take my Trump hat off to appease the left,’ she wrote. ‘This is raw, unfiltered intolerance. Freedom of speech doesn’t evaporate at the gym door’.
In the final social media post she relayed before her appointment, she criticized what she described as a ‘carnivorous virus’ that she claimed was ‘gnawing away’ at the Democratic Party.
Reaction and role ahead
Zacharia responded to the appointment in a post on X, writing: ‘Serving President Trump and the American people at this critical 250-year mark is the honor of a lifetime’. She added that Trump had ‘shown America that we can be great again, and he works to effectuate that greatness every single day’.
She said she looked forward ‘to working with the White House press corps, and with reporters across the country, to get that record out’.
Justin Buchler, a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, told the BBC that Trump’s appointments during his second term have been ‘based on personal affiliation and loyalty.’ Buchler said, ‘He values loyalty first and foremost’.
Yanna Krupnikov, a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan, said the selection ‘speaks to a blurring of the lines between different media types.’ She told the BBC, ‘I think the goal is not as much speaking to the media and journalists, but making sure that particular, very specific sound-bytes and messages get to ordinary people’.
Zacharia will become Trump’s sixth chief spokesperson across his two administrations. The press secretary role involves managing contentious relationships with the press, coordinating with other parts of the White House, and providing media advice to the president.
Trump said of Zacharia: ‘I am confident that Katie will deliver strong results for our Country as the next White House Press Secretary, as she has the respect of, and will work fantastically with, the Media, the American People, and my Administration’.
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