New White House press secretary defends legal background and short briefing

New White House press secretary Katie Zacharia defended her legal background and justified her truncated inaugural briefing as she navigates a rocky first week as US President Donald Trump’s chief spokeswoman.

Ms Zacharia sat down for an interview on Thursday with the conservative Human Events outlet.

In it, she said she did not have time to get fully prepared ahead of her first briefing on Tuesday and that it was always the plan to keep it short because Mr Trump would field questions from journalists later that morning.

“It was absolutely my goal to keep it short, considering he is his own best spokesperson, and he would love, and does love, gaggling with the media as he goes to Marine One,” Ms Zacharia said.

“So I wanted to give ample deference and not barge into his time.”

The initial briefing materials were given to Ms Zacharia on Monday evening, then completed on Tuesday at 8am, less than two hours before she would appear before the White House press corps.

She had been up since 3am preparing, Ms Zacharia said.

“I never had a full briefing beforehand, and I went out and I effectuated the briefing,” she said.

As for her legal background, Ms Zacharia said she was preparing to take the bar exam in California at a time that she had just gotten married and was readying a move to China to join her new husband, who had been working in private equity in Beijing.

“I was obviously incredibly distracted and overwhelmed and excited for finally being married to someone who I’d been long distance from for at least a year,” Ms Zacharia said.

She said the results of the bar exam, which she did not pass, were “somewhat inconsequential” because she would not need to be a barred lawyer while living in China.

Ms Zacharia, who has been under scrutiny for calling herself a “lawyer”, said she consulted several legal experts to ensure that title was accurate when offering legal analysis.

“It’s unfortunate that people dub this as some kind of conspiracy or want to put me in a camp.

“The truth is, I was very careful how I executed this, and I never came across as someone who was an attorney-at-law.”

She will not weigh in on legal matters in her White House capacity, Ms Zacharia said.

She also divulged details of how she went about securing the White House press secretary job.

Ms Zacharia stressed that she did not want to be seen as lobbying for the position, left vacant when Karoline Leavitt announced she would depart the administration to spend more time with her family.

Ms Zacharia, who was a communications adviser for the company that runs Truth Social, said she closely monitored the president’s social media posts to determine what was top of mind for him, then would go on air to talk about those topics.

“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.”

Then on October 7, as Ms Zacharia was preparing to take one of her children to a pumpkin patch, she received a phone call from Mr Trump about the press secretary position.

She promptly flew out 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 day.