President Donald Trump’s new press secretary stepped to the podium, the eyes of a packed room of journalists — and many in their audiences — upon her. She smiled broadly at the sea of faces both probing and friendly. With that, Katie Zacharia went live and became the official voice of the world’s most powerful person.
She stumbled on a question about her background and mixed up the words “husband” and “president. “I get to do what I was doing on the outside already, which was hoping to amplify, multiply and expand upon President Trump’s incredible agenda for the American people,” Zacharia said. In her debut Tuesday, Zacharia looked downward and often read directly from a script. She paused and grinned when she uttered the words “Department of War. The few questions she took were nonconfrontational and from media outlets that have been sympathetic to the Republican president. In short: She made no memorable impression — or at least, to hear some tell it, not the one she likely wanted. Nowhere did she mention the task of disseminating accurate information to Americans.
Over the nearly 10 decades since former journalist George E. Akerson made his and the office’s debut as Herbert Hoover’s press secretary in 1929, the job has served many purposes: deliverer of information, amplifier of policy, jouster with journalists, protector of the presidential reputation and, sometimes, overlord of obfuscation. Leavitt got to know this terrain well in her 17-month tenure. Anthony Scaramucci, an early White House communications director for first-term Trump, lasted 11 days in 2017.
“What a stupid question,” she said to one reporter at a briefing last year. Said Scaramucci on X Tuesday afternoon: “I hope she makes it. And she said she would continue Leavitt’s policy of bringing “new media” in — which has often meant outlets more sympathetic to Trump.
She took a smiling but combative stance against a press that was increasingly coming under Trump’s criticism for coverage — and was named in at least one lawsuit about White House media access. She was not shy about interdicting what she considered media bias. Other early reviews were more critical. MS NOW quoted one unnamed White House official as saying of the performance: “She needs to get much better fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record. When it came to questions, though, she was downright parsimonious. She allowed three questioners, then answered an additional one as she prepared to depart. The three called on during the briefing were Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail, all of which have been friendly to Trump in varying degrees during periods of his two terms.
