After nearly two months with an empty podium, Donald Trump has finally chosen the next voice of his White House.
Karoline Leavitt stepped back two months ago to focus on her husband and their two young children. But Trump didn’t have to look very far to find her replacement.
The woman he tapped has spent recent months on the payroll of his own social media company.
Her government résumé also includes a high-profile job she left after only about six weeks.
But by Friday afternoon, the woman’s résumé was the last thing people were talking about.
Leavitt, 29, is the press secretary who stepped away from the briefing room in August. One detail about the new hire had many people squinting at their screens.
NBC News reported Friday that conservative commentator Katie Zacharia will be the next White House press secretary.
Trump confirmed it later that day on Truth Social. He said it was his “Great Honor” to appoint her and that she would be replacing “the fabulous Karoline Leavitt.”
Zacharia returned the love, writing that following Leavitt “is a high standard, and one worth meeting.” Her start date has not been announced.
Yet details of her personal life caught people off guard.
According to The Daily Beast, Zacharia is 41 years old and a mother of four. That makes her a full 12 years older than the 29-year-old Leavitt, who became the youngest press secretary in history when she took the job in 2024.
Social media users instantly put their photos side by side, and plenty said they could barely tell the two women apart.
Both ladies have the same long blond waves, the same megawatt smile and the same polished cable-news glow. Critics have come to call that look “Mar-a-Lago face,” the uniform style shared by so many women in Trump’s orbit.
So who is she? Zacharia currently works as a senior communications adviser for Trump Media & Technology Group, the company that runs Truth Social. She has also been a familiar face on conservative TV.
Her path wasn’t always so MAGA. The outlet reported she lived in Beijing from 2011 to 2013 with her husband, Tyler. While there she worked as a corporate lawyer and as a fundraising manager for a nonprofit serving the children of migrant workers.
These days, Zacharia’s Instagram, which jumped from 40K to nearly 70K followers by Friday night, leans heavily on Fox News appearances and photos with the president. In one post, she praised him as the man “who defies all odds and norms.”
Then there’s her short stay at the Department of Homeland Security. Zacharia joined the agency in February as a spokesperson under then-Secretary Kristi Noem. She announced her exit about six weeks later, according to Just the News.
The Daily Beast had reported that her ties to Corey Lewandowski, Noem’s adviser and alleged lover, sealed her fate. Zacharia denied that. She told Just the News that constant travel between Washington and her California home had strained her family.
That detail is hard to ignore. Leavitt walked away from this exact job, saying it left her too little time for her children.
Now Trump has handed it to a mother of four who said a government job was already too hard on her family.
Online, a lot of people saw a pattern. “He has a type, doesn’t he?” one Facebook user wrote in a comment that racked up hundreds of likes. Another simply dubbed Trump’s communications team the “Trumpford Wives.”
“Oh wow,” added another person.
Others zeroed in on the resemblance to Leavitt. “How can you tell they’re not the same person?” one person asked on X.
One critic even had a question ready for her first briefing: “Who won the 2020 election?”
Zacharia beat out a long list of rumored contenders. The list included Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba, ex-campaign spokesman Jason Miller, Leavitt’s deputy Anna Kelly, and CNN’s resident MAGA defender Scott Jennings, who was caught making desperate moves behind the scenes to land the gig.
Leavitt, meanwhile, has already moved on. Fox News announced this week that it hired her as an on-air contributor, sparking its own drama in Trump world.
The scrutiny over how Trump’s leading ladies look isn’t new. Before her exit, Leavitt’s changing appearance had viewers doing double takes.
When she announced she was leaving, attention quickly shifted to another young blonde aide who suddenly seemed to be everywhere.
Now Zacharia steps into the spotlight, and the internet is waiting to see whether she can handle the briefing room as well as she handles the camera.
