White House press briefing with Katie Zacharia — IN FULL

[0:06] good morning i am so honored to work for president trump and the american people [0:16] as the new white house press secretary i want to thank president trump for his trust that he [0:25] has placed in me i have wanted to work for him for a very long time i'm looking forward to working [0:35] with each of you as well especially as we are in the middle of the midterm blitz with energy and [0:42] excitement never seen before in the history of midterms thanks to president trump just look no [0:51] further than last night in youngstown ohio where president trump delivered another blockbuster [0:58] rally out on the trail the arena was overflowing with enthusiasm as thousands came out to support [1:06] president trump as well as special guest jake paul and football legend john gruden the president also [1:14] announced the department of war has officially selected cleveland ohio as the new home for the [1:21] u.s navy's submarine component repair center this massive 46 000 square foot facility will manufacture [1:32] repair and maintain key parts for virtually all new and existing submarines this is historic [1:42] everyday americans are showing up in droves to attend these rallies because of president trump's america [1:49] first agenda of lower taxes higher wages and one of my favorites secure borders but it doesn't stop there [2:01] president trump is planning to hold rallies in alaska arizona montana where i will be with him and georgia [2:13] building off of the incredible momentum generated over the last several days from his stops in tennessee [2:21] new york texas and nebraska he is an energetic president attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic [2:30] hard-working americans are lining up and packing arenas to support president trump and republicans [2:38] it's not hard to see why president trump is fighting and delivering for american workers every minute of [2:50] every day real wages are up 1.2 percent since president trump took office with average annual earnings [2:59] outpacing inflation by 800 under biden real wages fell nearly four percent with the average private sector [3:09] workers annual purchasing power declining by nearly three thousand dollars annually president trump is [3:17] the first president in modern history to actually lower prescription drug prices delivering the biggest drop [3:27] in 63 years president trump has created more than one million private sector jobs in his second term [3:35] including nearly 112 000 factory construction jobs and 72 000 manufacturing jobs this year alone and thanks [3:45] to president trump we are once again bringing back american energy dominance because energy security [3:53] is national security president trump secured the biggest oil deal in world history delivering the u.s [4:03] majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in venezuela he had a historic one [4:13] day war and now we are have a booming economy and a great relationship with venezuela the u.s achieved record [4:22] domestic oil and gas production in 2025 and record crude and petroleum product exports in 2026. building [4:32] off of his historic boom in energy production in the first 15 months of this administration we have [4:38] secured trillions of dollars and new investments trillions of dollars including 1.4 trillion dollars from [4:46] the united arab emirates 600 billion dollars from apple and 340 billion dollars from amazon [4:54] no other president could have gotten these deals done just weeks ago president trump announced that [5:00] masabe metallics will build a massive 15 billion dollar steel complex in iowa the largest steel plant [5:11] ever built in the united states this facility a historic facility will create 1750 new permanent jobs [5:21] jobs and support up to 6 000 construction jobs and generate an estimated 95 billion dollars in economic [5:31] output in addition president trump and enduro announced arsenal 2 the biggest american shipyard push since [5:41] world war ii in maryland this new facility will create about 3100 direct jobs and support more than 11 [5:49] 11 000 indirect jobs president trump also unveiled a south korea energy investment package of up to 200 [5:58] billion dollars in the united states this is an amazing deal this includes as much as 120 billion dollars [6:07] to build a to build eight large scale nuclear power plants something we've needed as the united states and [6:13] something president trump promised on the campaign trail and something president trump is delivering on [6:19] just like he delivers on every promise in addition to that we will be we will be do yeah there is 54 [6:29] billion dollars tied to the alaska lng pipeline and terminal to service the pacific rim and sell fuel to [6:38] our allies as well as 22.3 billion dollars for a six gigawatt natural gas power facility in texas not [6:48] only is the trump administration bringing in trillions of dollars to invest throughout the country but we [6:54] are also protecting your tax dollars by addressing fraud head on since taking office the trump administration [7:02] has uncovered over 260 billion dollars of fraud stopped 72 billion dollars of fraud annually through [7:11] administrative actions and recovered 58.9 billion dollars through indictments settlements and civil monetary [7:21] penalties above all president trump is working to secure the western hemisphere for centuries to come [7:31] president trump signed an unprecedented agreement giving the united states lasting control over security [7:39] interests in greenland president trump has used the power of tariffs to stop china from producing [7:47] fentanyl precursor chemicals those fent the fentanyl killed many of our citizens and he is hard at work [7:54] and ensuring that that won't happen and here at home fentanyl trafficking across the southern border [8:02] is down 56 percent and fentanyl linked deaths plunged 22 percent in a single year because of president trump [8:12] this is a president and administration that is looking out for you the american people and i'm thrilled [8:20] to officially be part of this incredible journey together and with that i will take your questions [8:29] here in our new media seat we have nick gelbertson from breitbart hi katie uh welcome to the briefing [8:35] room and congrats on the new position one of the things that your predecessor caroline levitt did is [8:41] open this room up to more voices not less at breitbart that's something our founder Andrew breitbart [8:47] certainly believed in and whether that's adding this new media seat adding new media voices to the pool [8:53] can you tell us what you plan to do to continue to ensure that new media voices continue to be heard [8:59] here at the white house yeah well firstly my predecessor caroline levitt did an incredible job [9:03] and i completely agree with the choice of new media seat we are absolutely going to keep it [9:10] and we're going to expand on it to the extent possible we love new media and we want to be able [9:15] to embrace it absolutely and then just to follow up too you did touch on presidential travel um the [9:21] president's been all over the place and he kind of laid out his schedule over the next couple days but [9:26] is it only going to intensify here in the next couple of weeks up to midterms absolutely you can expect [9:31] more of the midterm blitz uh just now we've added kentucky and we have a few other stops as he goes [9:39] down to florida so it'll be georgia kentucky and florida yes hello we will take peter ducey thanks [9:48] katie nice to meet you um you're starting as white house press secretary three weeks before a midterm [9:55] cycle the president trump himself says will be very tough for republicans is your job just to speak [10:03] about white house matters or is it to make things less tough for republicans in the midterms well but [10:09] peter i get to do what i was doing on the outside already which was hoping to amplify multiply and [10:17] expand upon president trump's incredible agenda for the american people and what i hope to do in this [10:23] position is to take that into an official capacity and only build on only amplify and only multiply to [10:30] the extent possible all of the wins he's making for americans for for americans to understand how much [10:37] has changed in this brief period of time what he's been able to accomplish my goal is to be able to [10:42] communicate that in complete tandem with the president as he is his own best spokesperson and will [10:49] absolutely be leading the way as with that and i want to ask you a policy question has the u.s stopped [10:56] sharing intel with ukraine i'll have to get back to you on that alina shirazi yes alina shirazi [11:08] hi congrats on the job thank you first of all and i have two questions for you if i can uh first of all [11:15] on kimberly guilfoyle the daily mail has been reporting on her since last year the president [11:20] said yesterday to reporters that he is considering firing her do you know a timeline for that and also [11:27] potentially who could be on the short list to replace her if he does we have asked ambassador [11:32] guilfoyle to resign she has been a wonderful asset to the team and we wish her well okay second [11:41] question for you if i may a personal question your family is in california your husband you have four [11:47] children um i'm wondering how you manage how are you going to manage that caroline levitt left because [11:53] she wanted to spend more time with her family and also did she give you any advice on how to handle this [11:58] job and the people in this room well first of all i want to give my husband an amazing shout out we have [12:04] four kids ranging from 12 10 8 and 6. three of them are boys so we have a handful and i adore my family [12:13] i love them they are my priority they i i love being with my kids the idea of not spending evenings with [12:20] my kid is kids are is completely uh unacceptable so my president excuse me my husband uh that's a that's [12:28] a good one my husband is out here is out here for the week because we have two birthdays in our family [12:35] and we are very very protective of celebrating birthdays as a family so he brought the entire crew out here [12:41] blessed him it's a lot and we will be moving out here and as far as your second question is yes [12:48] caroline has been an incredible support she gave me great and wonderful feedback on how to balance i think [12:55] this job is not one you necessarily balance and i would love to share that in my career i stayed home [13:02] with my kids from 2014 to 2020 in in the process of having them and then when i started working again [13:08] i was able to integrate them into my life there are many photos of which are not public of the kids and [13:14] i at fox bureau where they are sitting with me in the pod before it hit so i intend to to the extent [13:20] possible include my family include my kids in my work though my work will be demanding they will [13:26] always be a priority and i i president trump is the most family friendly president we've ever had [13:32] he has hired more women with families and the fact that he knew i had four kids and he knew that this [13:38] job would be demanding and still placed his trust in me shows that i know i'm capable of being able to [13:44] step up to that so thank you for that question in fact i am going to end it because president [13:48] trump is heading out to marine one for our historic trip to alaska and we can ask him all of the [13:55] questions out there so thank you so much did the president speak with the ambassador to the question [14:04] on 30 the president will be back on thursday and that's what i will answer i'll leave it there [14:09] there he will he will answer those questions out and bring more questions