Washington, Oct 13 (IANS) Katie Zacharia opened her first briefing as White House Press Secretary on Tuesday with a sales pitch for President Donald Trump’s midterm campaign, sidestepped a question on intelligence sharing with Ukraine and ended the session early to join Trump on a trip to Alaska.
“I am so honoured to work for President Trump and the American people as the new White House Press Secretary,” Zacharia said. “I have wanted to work for him for a very long time.”
The briefing’s main news came when she said the White House had asked Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign as US Ambassador to Greece.
Zacharia, who said she was taking over “in the middle of the midterm blitz”, spent much of her opening on Trump’s rally schedule.
She pointed to his rally on Monday night in Youngstown, Ohio, where she said the US President had announced that the Department of War had selected Cleveland as the new home for the US Navy’s Submarine Component Repair Centre.
She described the 46,000-square-foot facility as one that would “manufacture, repair, and maintain key parts for virtually all new and existing submarines.”
Trump plans rallies in Alaska, Arizona, Montana and Georgia, she said, after recent stops in Tennessee, New York, Texas and Nebraska.
“He is an energetic President,” she said.
Asked later whether Trump’s travel would intensify, she said: “Absolutely, you can expect more of the midterm blitz. Just now we’ve added Kentucky, and we have a few other stops as he goes down to Florida.”
Zacharia also made a string of economic claims. She said real wages were up 1.2 per cent since Trump took office and that Trump had created more than one million private sector jobs in his second term.
She claimed the administration had secured “trillions of dollars” in new investment, including USD 1.4 trillion from the United Arab Emirates, USD 600 billion from Apple and USD 340 billion from Amazon.
Asked by Breitbart’s Nick Gilbertson about the new media seat introduced in the briefing room under her predecessor, she said it would stay.
“My predecessor, Karoline Leavitt, did an incredible job. And I completely agree with the choice of new media seat. We are absolutely going to keep it, and we’re going to expand on it to the extent possible,” she said.
Asked by Fox News’ Peter Doocy whether her job was to make the midterms less tough for Republicans, she spoke of seeking to “amplify, multiply, and expand upon” Trump’s agenda. She said Trump “is his own best spokesperson” and that her goal was to communicate “in complete tandem with the president.”
Asked whether the United States had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, Zacharia replied: “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
She was also asked about managing the job with a family in California, and whether Leavitt had given her advice.
“Karoline has been an incredible support. She gave me great and wonderful feedback on how to balance,” Zacharia said. “I think this job is not one you necessarily balance.”
She said she had four children, aged 12, 10, 8 and 6, and that the family would be moving to Washington. “The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable,” she said.
Zacharia then ended the briefing. “I am going to end it because President Trump is heading out to Marine One for our historic trip to Alaska, and we can ask him all of the questions out there,” she said.
Asked as she left whether Trump had spoken with Guilfoyle, she said the president would answer “out in Marine One.”
–IANS
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