WASHINGTON — The White House’s new press secretary took questions from three reporters at her first briefing on Tuesday, all from conservative outlets, and when one asked whether the United States has stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine she said she would “have to get back to you on that.”
Katie Zacharia, a conservative commentator and former senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, spoke for under 15 minutes, more than half of it prepared remarks, according to NBC News. The questions came from Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail, and the last of them drew the one piece of hard news. Zacharia described her job as amplifying the president, saying she hopes to “only build on, only amplify and only multiply” his wins.
The news was an exit. Zacharia said the administration had asked Kimberly Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece, to resign: “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team and we wish her well.” EH reported on October 8 that Guilfoyle disputed a report that she asked a Trump donor to pay $100,000 toward her American Express balance, with her lawyer questioning the authenticity of the messages behind it.
One question went unanswered in a different way. After the briefing, asked which state’s bar exam she had passed, Zacharia said she “moved to China,” NBC News reported. Her LinkedIn profile lists work at the Zhong Lun Law Firm from 2011 to 2013, and a White House official said she moved to China with her husband after law school at Pepperdine and “practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials.” The official did not directly answer whether she passed the bar.
She inherits a communications operation that Trump himself has criticized. Karoline Leavitt said in August that she was leaving to spend more time with her family, and at a recent rally in Oklahoma Trump said the administration is “not doing a good job of public relations.” An NBC News poll last month found 41 percent of registered voters approve of his performance, a second-term low, with the Iran war showing no clear end and raising fuel prices. Zacharia said Trump will keep up his midterm “blitz” with stops in Kentucky, Georgia and Florida, and that attendance at his rallies is at “record highs.”
The accounts reviewed do not say whether Guilfoyle has resigned, or whether the White House has since answered the question about Ukraine.
