Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, sat down with Jack Posobiec on Human Events Daily for an interview, just days after she made her first appearance in the White House press briefing room. She spoke on being appointed, her life before she took the job, and her legal background.
Zacharia said that she didn’t lobby for the role when former press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that she was leaving, saying that “my philosophy is, I'm on TV enough where if he sees me and he likes me, then I will be recruited for the job. I do not believe that lobbying for that job would have been successful, and I wanted to work for it. I wanted to audition for it," she said.
“So I tracked every news hit to be in accordance with what policies he was pushing forward, particularly on Truth Social, since I was the senior communications advisor for Trump Media and Technology Group in Truth Social, where I would track what's important to President Trump, and I'm going to go on the news and talk about it.”
She said she had been getting ready to go to a pumpkin patch with her son when she received a call from the president, launching into a whirlwind weekend of travel leading up to her first press conference. She said she had wanted the job in 2016 but prioritized family and having children.
Zacharia spoke on her legal background following reports saying she hadn't passed the bar exam and moved to China. Zacharia attended Pepperdine University, where an adjunct professor introduced her to his son who was living in China. The two would later become married. She said he and her husband had been doing a long-distance relationship and she knew she was going to move to China, but had pre-registered to take the bar.
“I was obviously incredibly distracted and overwhelmed and excited for finally being married to someone who had been long-distance from for at least a year, a year and a half when you include the engagement. And we just said, let's take this time and I'll take the bar and let's see what happens. The results are somewhat inconsequential because I knew I wouldn't need the bar in China, and and we left shortly thereafter,” she said.
“And after moving to China, I think I didn't really think much of the bar results or consider that something that I needed to focus on. And I was offered a job in an international practice division of a Chinese law firm called Zhong Lun Law Firm. And the international practice were four associates under a senior partner, and we worked the international side, the English language side, and we had a Chinese counterpart that was there. There's no Chinese bar. I had enough credentials, which was my law degree, to be able to do this practice.”
Posobiec asked why she didn’t go for the bar again when they returned to the US, and Zacharia said that was because of the unexpected pregnancy with her oldest son.
“Well, when we moved back, Jack, we got a surprise baby. Our first baby is, this is his birthday today, and he is 12 years old. And we got pregnant, and we decided, all right, well, we're going to stay in the United States, and we are not going to move back abroad because that was still an option. We were considering maybe Singapore or somewhere.” They went on to have four children in total over a span of six years, the last being born in 2020.
“A lot of the misinformation, miscommunication, Jack, is around the fact that I labeled myself lawyer, and I consulted for a very long time many people in the field, is it okay and acceptable if I label myself lawyer, not attorney at law, not Katie Zachariah Esquire, but lawyer, and provide legal analysis, not legal advice? And they said absolutely, absolutely across the board. You can call yourself a lawyer.”
She said she will not be weighing in on legal matters in her role as press secretary, saying that her job is instead “to amplify and communicate" Trump's "message and to interact with the press and build relationships and strengthen relationships and communicate clearly the message of the administration.”
Posobiec concluded the interview by joking that Saturday Night Live will definitely be having someone play her on the weekly show. He asked who she would want to have play her. She replied, “maybe a Scarlett Johansson-type character.”
