The Deleted Tweets of the New White House Press Secretary
The Bulwark · C · trust 48/100
Katie Zacharia is ready to defend Trump. The Constitution? Less so.
Brendan Hartnett October 10 Upgrade to listen 6 minute s 67 14 12 (Photo illustration by The Bulwark | Photo: Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for 2521 Entertainment and Angel Studios) DONALD TRUMP’S NEW PRESS SECRETARY has had a sordid online history of spreading vaccine conspiracy theories, calling for the upending of constitutional norms, and encouraging the president to run for a third term in office—much of which she appears to have tried to expunge from the public record sometime before ascending to her new job.
The White House announced on Friday that Katie Zacharia would be the new press secretary, succeeding Karoline Leavitt, who served in the role until late August. While Zacharia was a dark horse candidate for the job, she comes to it with the sort of professional background you’d expect. She was a spokeswoman for then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has appeared frequently on both Fox News and Newsmax, and was most recently a communications adviser to Trump Media and Technology Group.
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In those roles, and in her personal capacity, Zacharia has often made public remarks and online posts that could create uncomfortable questions for her when she takes the podium in the White House press briefing room. For example, how committed is Zacharia to the rule of law? In a series of deleted tweets , she called for suspending habeas corpus, one of the oldest and most fundamental safeguards of individual liberty, in response to a tweet from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claiming sanctuary cities are a criminal conspiracy.
Or what about the constitutional standing of the states in our federal system? In a now-deleted tweet from June 2025 responding to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Zacharia argued that “The federal government under @realDonaldTrump should take over all of California because clearly you can’t be trusted to do a single thing.”
Zacharia’s posts also indicate deeply skeptical views about COVID, bordering on conspiracism. In August she reposted an article claiming that “8 in 10 women had a miscarriage after getting the COVID vaccine”—a statistic wildly at odds with actual scientific data. And in 2022, from a now-deleted Twitter account, 1 she repeatedly accused Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates of being “a eugenicist” who “was pushing for everyone to get a toxic jab.”
Her tweets are a grab bag of right-wing talking points. In September 2025, Zacharia accused “leftist transgender assailants” of being responsible for “at least a dozen” school shootings. Last month, she called Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed—who was born and raised in the United States—“an indictment of our immigration system under Democrats.” Last week, she charged Chief Justice John Roberts with being “not even that conservative” and said his opinion in the birthright citizenship case “should have gotten him a seat back at those lib-tables.”
And in a podcast interview last year she insisted that the abortion pill mifepristone was the same chemical used in Nazi Germany extermination camps. It’s not .
SUCH POSITIONS MAY PLACE ZACHARIA outside the political mainstream. But they likely will endear her to elements of the MAGA base, and be met with loud echoes from others in Trump’s orbit. So too will her over-the-top admiration for her boss, a personality feature that appears to be a prerequisite for a gig in this White House.
She once demanded that Time should be “forced” to publish a heroic-looking Trump photo after the president complained the magazine published a picture he found unflattering. Just last month she posted to X that “President Trump does not need a spokesperson. He is his own best Press Secretary.”
Her professed fealty to Trump includes a commitment to his Big Lie: Zacharia has insisted that the 2020 election was stolen . And she has repeatedly encouraged Trump to run for a third term as president in 2028—despite the Constitution explicitly prohibiting his election to another term.
Perhaps the one thing that could cause Zacharia problems with her new colleagues is her occasional lack of rah-rah spirit. Namely, her skepticism about Republicans’ chances in the upcoming midterm elections. In a deleted tweet responding to Pizzagate promoter Mike Cernovich last December, she warned that the midterms would be a “bloodbath if [Republicans] don’t shift course now.”
The White House did not respond to The Bulwark ’s request for comment before the time of publication.
The old Twitter account shares the same handle, @KatieZacharia, as Zacharia’s current personal X account, which was created in November 2022. The old account seems to have been deleted at some point in 2022.
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