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The new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, defended her legal training and justified her shortened first press briefing while facing scrutiny over her past.
Zacharia sat down for an interview on Thursday with the conservative outlet Human Events. In it, she stated that she did not have time to prepare fully before her first press briefing on Tuesday and that it was always the plan to keep it brief because President Donald Trump would be answering questions from reporters later that same morning.
"My goal was certainly to keep it short, keeping in mind that he is his own best spokesperson, and he would love—and loves—to chat with the media while heading to Marine One (the presidential helicopter)," Zacharia stated. "So I wanted to show the proper deference and not take up his time."
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The initial materials for the press briefing were given to Zacharia on Monday night and were then completed on Tuesday at 8 a.m., less than two hours before appearing before reporters. She had been awake since 3 a.m. preparing, according to her account.
"I had never had a full briefing session before, and I went out and did the press briefing," she noted.
Regarding her legal training, Zacharia explained that she was preparing to take the bar exam in California at a time when she had just gotten married and was preparing to move to China to join her new husband, who had been working in private equity in Beijing.
"Obviously I was incredibly distracted, overwhelmed, and excited about finally being married to someone with whom I had been in a long-distance relationship for at least a year," Zacharia commented.
She indicated that the results of the bar exam, which she did not pass, were "somewhat inconsequential" because she would not need to be licensed as an attorney while living in China.
Zacharia, who has been under scrutiny for calling herself an "attorney," said she consulted several legal experts to ensure that title was correct when offering legal analysis.
"It is unfortunate that people label it as some kind of conspiracy or want to pigeonhole me. The truth is I was very careful about how I went about it, and I never presented myself as someone who was a practicing attorney," she asserted.
She will not offer opinions on legal matters in her role at the White House, she stated.
She also revealed details of how she got the press secretary position. She emphasized that she did not want to portray herself as someone lobbying for the job, which became vacant when Karoline Leavitt announced she would be leaving the administration to spend more time with her family.
Zacharia, who was a communications advisor for the company that operates Truth Social, said she kept a close watch on the president's social media posts to determine what he was most concerned about, and then would go on the air to discuss those issues.
"My philosophy is: I am on television enough that if he sees me and likes me, then I will be recruited for the job. I don't think lobbying for that position would have been successful, and I wanted to earn it. I wanted to audition for it."
Then, on October 7, while Zacharia was preparing to take one of her children to a pumpkin patch, she received a phone call from Trump about the press secretary position.
She flew the next day from her home in California to Washington, met with the president about the job on Friday, and formally accepted the position later that same day.
[Publicidad]