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Leavitt Replacement’s Ploy to Get Trump’s Attention Revealed

Katie Zacharia played the game—and won.

Karoline Leavitt’s replacement as Donald Trump’s press secretary landed the job by making the president think choosing her was his idea all along.

Katie Zacharia, 41, didn’t push Trump to hire her after Leavitt, 29, quit in August, a source familiar with the matter told Politico’s Playbook newsletter on Tuesday.

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Instead, Zacharia did her homework, checking the president’s schedule and monitoring his Truth Social activity to ensure she was giving interviews whenever she thought he might be watching TV.

Her on-air appearances piqued Trump’s interest, while backing from several influential anchors on right-wing networks like Newsmax, One America News Network, and Fox News did the rest, according to Politico’s source.

Zacharia, slated for her first briefing Tuesday morning, steps up to the podium after Leavitt, 29, left to spend more time with her family. Leavitt’s decision came after Trump, 80, inundated her with calls while she was on maternity leave after the birth of her daughter, asking when she planned to return to work.

The California-born former lawyer takes the reins amid a run of other high-profile Oval Office departures, including Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Chief Counsel David Warrington.

The White House press operation in particular has lost a quarter of its senior staff since the start of August. Many of those still on the job are apparently worried about what Trump’s plummeting approval ratings could mean for their workload and future career prospects after the Nov. 3 elections.

“There’s a very real concern that the midterms will not turn out good for Republicans,” one former staffer told the Daily Mail earlier this month. “Once Nov. 3 hits, it’s Armageddon, and everyone’s out,” another added.

Zacharia appears unfazed by those warnings, telling the Daily Beast in a statement on Tuesday that “I am grateful to serve President Trump as Press Secretary, and I will diligently and effectively amplify his successful agenda.”

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The ex-attorney previously handled communications for the company behind Truth Social after working for the Republican National Committee. She also briefly took on a senior communications role under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem earlier this year, but departed in March after Trump fired Noem and forced out her advisor and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski.

Since she landed the press secretary job, Zacharia has faced growing scrutiny over her embarrassing online history. Her previous posts show her promoting the thoroughly discredited Pizzagate hoax, entertaining the QAnon conspiracy theory, and backing the idea of Trump seeking a Constitution-busting third term. She has also spread a bogus theory connecting abortion medications to the poison gas used in Nazi death camps.

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Her secret weapon in the race to replace Leavitt seems to have been her relative restraint in angling for the job. CNN pundit Scott Jennings, 48, was considered the frontrunner after Leavitt quit. Like Zacharia, he appeared determined to use his airtime to impress the president, but made little effort to conceal his ambitions.

The former George W. Bush aide and Mitch McConnell adviser spent weeks offering increasingly extravagant defenses of Trump on CNN, often prompting furious backlash from his fellow panelists. One particularly blatant audition came when he branded Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff a “disgusting coward” for viral comments about the president’s relationship with 34-year-old aide, Natalie Harp.

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Jennings apparently circulated recordings of that outburst among senior Trump officials, while also lavishing praise on Leavitt, another of the president’s favorite aides, as “maybe the greatest White House press secretary in the last 30 years, at least.”

Those efforts, despite his backing from Trump’s powerful Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, failed to pay off. His defeat sparked a wave of mockery after Trump announced Zacharia as his pick on Friday, with critics suggesting the CNN regular had “debased” himself before the president for nothing.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.

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