Hi, I’m Your New Press Secretary, and It’s My First Time Reading Words Out Loud

I’m your new press secretary, Katie Zacharia! You may know me from my appearances on Fox News; I am pretty sure that is how the president knows me. That is how he identifies all possible candidates for jobs: turning on the TV and pointing. My successor will be a Kalshi commercial.

I also might be a lawyer! Where did I pass the bar, you ask? After I moved to China. No further questions! (See, I am getting into the press-secretary spirit already.)

When you consider that this is my first time reading words out loud, today was actually a pretty impressive performance. I swear that I have seen a sentence before, and I know where one stops and. Starts. And whether? To speak. With a rising inflection? This lends an air of trepidation to every one of my prepared words, as though saying any one of them aloud might cause a trapdoor to open beneath me.

I’m bringing a kind of “unlicensed bus driver” energy to this speech: unsteady at best, with many seemingly random stops in unexpected places. Just call me Vote by Mail, because my delivery is raising a lot of questions in the White House.

I am excited for this job because—well, let me use my exact words: “I get to do what I was doing on the outside already, which was hoping to amplify, multiply, and expand upon President Trump’s incredible agenda for the American people. And what I hope to do in this position is to take that into an official capacity and only build on, only amplify, and only multiply, to the extent possible, all of the wins he’s making for Americans, for, for Americans to understand how much has changed in this brief period of time—what he’s been able to accomplish. My goal is to be able to communicate that in complete tandem with the president, as he is his own best spokesperson and will absolutely be leading the way as with that.”

So there you have it. Wasn’t it Dan Quayle who once said that “verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things”? I assume he meant that positively!

Am I enjoying this job? In a word: no. I thought there would be more saying “HOW DARE YOU” to people asking questions, which I felt equipped to do. By the way, how do you think this is going so far? I have referred to my husband as “my president” only one time! That’s good, right?

Let me preempt some of your questions for me. No, this is not spoken-word poetry. No, I am not what turns up when you Google woman who has just seen the letters of the alphabet for the first time and is frightened of all of them. No, I am not a malfunctioning AI. Did you see me drink water even a single time? Yes, I am the best person for the job, provided the job does not involve reading any more words or answering any more questions.

This is the kind of meritocracy we’ve come to expect from the Trump administration. As Pete Hegseth and I like to say, it’s not meritocracy if it doesn’t include me.

No further questions! And look at that—it’s been 14 whole minutes already. That’s time! Good thing I will never have to do this again.