Trump has picked a replacement for White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
President Donald Trump is understood to have selected Katie Zacharia, a conservative activist and commentator, to serve as the next White House Press Secretary.
An administration official confirmed the pick, which was first reported by The New York Times, to The Independent on Friday.
Zacharia will fill a role that has been vacant since August, when former press secretary Karoline Leavitt resigned to spend more time with her two young children shortly after giving birth to her infant daughter.
A California native, Zacharia’s LinkedIn page lists her as currently working for the president’s Trump Media and Technology Group as a communications adviser. She also spent roughly a month working at the Department of Homeland Security as a spokesperson earlier this year.
Unlike Leavitt, who worked for Trump almost continuously since the last year of his first term, Zacharia has a history in GOP politics that predates the 47th president’s entry into the presidential arena.
She is a graduate of Pepperdine University, where she earned both undergraduate and law degrees, and she spent time in the White House as an intern during the George W. Bush administration.
Zacharia is also a longtime ally of Trump loyalist Ric Grenell and has spent time as a legal adviser for his Fix California group.
A longtime conservative commentator who is comfortable on television and in print, she penned an op-ed for The New York Post earlier this year in which she called Trump “the greatest president in U.S. history.”
