Eighty-two days. That is the span between the last substantive White House press briefing and the one President Trump has now scheduled for Tuesday at 9:30 a.m., and in that span exactly one person stood at the podium. Trump announced on Truth Social on Sunday that Katie Zacharia, a lawyer and senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, will become his next press secretary, starting Monday, Columbus Day, with an introductory news conference the following morning, as CNBC reported. “Katie has been with me, in spirit, from the very beginning, and will do a fantastic job!” he wrote.
Zacharia, 41, is a Pepperdine-trained lawyer and a self-described “hardline Trump supporter” who has spent the past four months as a senior communications adviser for Trump Media, the company that owns Truth Social, according to her LinkedIn profile cited by CNBC. She also serves as general counsel at Fix California, a conservative advocacy group founded by Richard Grenell, Trump’s special presidential envoy for special missions. She is married, with four children under 11, and spent two years in the early 2010s as a corporate lawyer in Beijing before moving into Republican politics full time, the Daily Beast reported.
She replaces Karoline Leavitt, who left the role in late August after going on maternity leave following the birth of her second child. Leavitt is expected to join Fox News as an on-air contributor next month.
The résumé line that will draw the most scrutiny is the one before Trump Media: a roughly six-week stint, from February to March, as deputy spokeswoman and deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security under then-Secretary Kristi Noem. Zacharia left around the time Noem and the DHS adviser Corey Lewandowski, who has been reported to have had an affair with Noem, also departed. An informal list of about two dozen officials deemed loyal to Noem circulated inside the department and was reviewed by senior administration figures including White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller; Zacharia’s name was on it, with DHS sources describing her as a “Corey person,” according to the Washington Examiner and the Daily Beast. Zacharia has denied the connection, attributing her exit instead to the strain of commuting between California and Washington.
| From | To | How |
|---|---|---|
| RNC & Bush White House intern (as a Pepperdine student) | Pepperdine law degree, 2011 | |
| Pepperdine law degree, 2011 | Corporate lawyer, Beijing (2011–2013) | |
| Corporate lawyer, Beijing (2011–2013) | RNC press secretary, 2024 | |
| RNC press secretary, 2024 | DHS deputy spokeswoman (Feb–Mar 2026, left amid Noem-Lewandowski fallout) | |
| DHS deputy spokeswoman (Feb–Mar 2026, left amid Noem-Lewandowski fallout) | Trump Media adviser (June 2026–) | |
| Trump Media adviser (June 2026–) | White House press secretary (named Oct. 11, 2026) |
Her most recent employer is not incidental. Trump Media is a public company, and Trump’s personal fortune is tied to its stock price in a way few White House hires’ former employers are. The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, controlled by Donald Trump Jr., holds roughly 52% of Trump Media’s shares; Forbes calculated that stake at about $1.49 billion as of early August, up from roughly $1 billion in late June, after DJT shares rallied off a 52-week low of $6.96, as Foreign Policy Journal reported. The rally followed the July 17 launch of Truth API, a paid feed giving trading firms real-time access to posts from major Truth Social accounts. Zacharia’s job for four months was promoting that company; her new job is speaking for the government that regulates, and occasionally does business with, it.
The vacancy itself is a data point about how this White House treats the job. Leavitt’s last scheduled appearance came and went roughly six weeks before Vice President JD Vance filled in on September 3, a session multiple outlets described as the administration’s first briefing in 42 days. No one followed him. Another 40 days passed before Zacharia’s scheduled debut on Tuesday, meaning 82 days elapsed with a single on-camera briefing in a room built for daily ones. That is a sharper version of a pattern from Trump’s first term, when press-secretary-led briefings fell from 93 in 2017 to 63 in 2018 to two in 2019, and then stopped entirely for more than a year starting in March 2019, according to Reporters Without Borders. Vance, asked at the September briefing whether Fox host Maria Bartiromo was in the running for the job, said he didn’t know; asked whether he’d been drafted into the role himself, he said Trump had warned him: “Be careful. I want you to do well, but if you do too well, I might make you press secretary.”
Other names reportedly in the mix, per the Daily Beast, included Scott Jennings, Alina Habba, Jason Miller and Anna Kelly; Trump himself had joked to reporters that Fox correspondent Peter Doocy might want the job. What landed on Zacharia instead is a record built almost entirely in conservative media and Republican comms shops rather than journalism: Fox News and Newsmax panel appearances, a 2024 stint as RNC press secretary, and a New York Post op-ed arguing that a gym’s request she remove a MAGA hat violated the First Amendment, a document that restrains government, not private businesses, from restricting speech, as CBS News noted.
Following the fabulous Karoline Leavitt is a high standard, and one worth meeting.
Leavitt, for her part, is headed somewhere with fewer hostile questions. Fox News Media said she will join as a contributor starting November 1, becoming the second former Trump press secretary at the network alongside Kayleigh McEnany, with Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott citing her “firsthand experience in the White House and on the presidential campaign trail,” Fox News reported. Leavitt, who at 27 had been the youngest press secretary in history, said serving in the role had been “the honor and adventure of a lifetime” and that she would return to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. while also giving Trump a new outside adviser.
Tuesday’s briefing will be the first test of whether the podium reopens for regular use or whether, as in Trump’s first term, the one-briefing-a-month pace becomes the norm again. The number to watch after that is less about Zacharia’s performance than about Trump Media’s share price on the days reporters ask her about it.