White House press briefing transcript, Oct 13, 2026

Good morning.

Good morning.

I am so honored to work for President Trump and the American people as the new White House press secretary. I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time. I'm looking forward to working with each of you as well, especially as we are in the middle of the midterm blitz, with energy and excitement never seen before in the history of midterms, thanks to President Trump. Just look no further than last night in Youngstown, Ohio, where President Trump delivered another blockbuster rally out on the trail. The arena was overflowing with enthusiasm, as thousands came out to support President Trump as well as special guests Jake Paul and football legend Jon Gruden.

The president also announced the Department of War has officially selected Cleveland, Ohio as the new home for the US Navy's Submarine Component Repair Center. This massive 46,000 square foot facility will manufacture, repair, and maintain key parts for virtually all new and existing submarines. This is historic. Everyday Americans are showing up in droves to attend these rallies because of President Trump's America First agenda of lower taxes, higher wages, and one of my favorites, secure borders. But it doesn't stop there. President Trump is planning to hold rallies in Alaska, Arizona, Montana, where I will be with him, and Georgia, building off of the incredible momentum generated over the last several days from his stops in Tennessee, New York, Texas and Nebraska.

He is an energetic president. Attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hardworking Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump and Republicans. It's not hard to see why. President Trump is fighting and delivering for American workers every minute of every day. Real wages are up 1.2 percent since President Trump took office, with average annual earnings outpacing inflation by $800. Under Biden, real wages fell nearly 4 percent, with the average private sector workers annual purchasing power declining by nearly $3,000 annually. President Trump is the first president in modern history to actually lower prescription drug prices, delivering the biggest drop in 63 years. President Trump has created more than one million private sector jobs in his second term, including nearly 112,000 factory construction jobs and 72,000 manufacturing jobs this year alone.

And thanks to President Trump, we are once again bringing back American energy dominance, because energy security is national security. President Trump secured the biggest oil deal in world history, delivering the US majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela. He had a historic one day war, and now we are -- have a booming economy and a great relationship with Venezuela. The US achieved record domestic oil and gas production in 2025 and record crude and petroleum product exports in 2026. Building off of his historic boom in energy production, in the first 15 months of this administration, we have secured trillions of dollars in new investments, trillions of dollars, including $1.4 trillion from the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion from Apple, and $340 billion from Amazon.

No other president could have gotten these deals done. Just weeks ago, President Trump announced that Mesabi Metallics will build a massive $15 billion steel complex in Iowa, the largest steel plant ever built in the United States. This facility, a historic facility, will create 1,750 new permanent jobs and support up to 6,000 construction jobs, and generate an estimated $95 billion in economic output. In addition, President Trump and Anduril announced Arsenal-2, the biggest American shipyard push since World War II in Maryland. This new facility will create about 3,100 direct jobs and support more than 11,000 indirect jobs. President Trump also unveiled a South Korea energy investment package of up to $200 billion in the United States. This is an amazing deal.

This includes as much as $120 billion to build a -- to build eight large scale nuclear power plants, something we've needed as the United States and something President Trump promised on the campaign trail and something President Trump is delivering on, just like he delivers on every promise. In addition to that, we will be -- we will be -- there is $54 billion tied to the Alaska LNG pipeline and terminal to service the Pacific Rim and sell fuel to our allies, as well as $22.3 billion for a six gigawatt natural gas power facility in Texas. Not only is the Trump administration bringing in trillions of dollars to invest throughout the country, but we are also protecting your tax dollars by addressing fraud head on.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has uncovered over $260 billion of fraud, stopped $72 billion of fraud annually through administrative actions, and recovered $58.9 billion through indictments, settlements and civil monetary penalties. Above all, President Trump is working to secure the Western Hemisphere for centuries to come. President Trump signed an unprecedented agreement giving the United States lasting control over security interests in Greenland. President Trump has used the power of tariffs to stop China from producing fentanyl precursor chemicals. Those -- the fentanyl killed many of our citizens, and he is hard at work and ensuring that that won't happen. And here at home, fentanyl trafficking across the southern border is down 56 percent, and fentanyl linked deaths plunged 22 percent in a single year because of President Trump.

This is a president and an administration that is looking out for you, the American people, and I'm thrilled to officially be part of this incredible journey together. And with that, I will take your questions. Here in our new media seat, we have Nick Gilbertson from Breitbart.

Hi, Katie. Welcome to the briefing room and congrats on the new position. One of the things that your predecessor, Karoline Leavitt, did is open this room up to more voices, not less. At Breitbart, that's something our founder, Andrew Breitbart, certainly believed in. And whether that's adding this new media seat, adding new media voices to the pool, can you tell us what you plan to do to continue to ensure that new media voices continue to be heard here at the White House?

Yeah. Well, firstly, my predecessor, Karoline Leavitt, did an incredible job. And I completely agree with the choice of new media seat. We are absolutely going to keep it and we're going to expand on it to the extent possible. We love new media, and we want to be able to embrace it.

And then just to follow up too, you did touch on presidential travel. The president's been all over the place, and you kind of laid out his schedule over the next couple days. But is it only going to intensify here in the next couple of weeks up to midterms?

Absolutely you can expect more of the midterm blitz. Just now we've added Kentucky, and we have a few other stops as he goes down to Florida. So, it'll be Georgia, Kentucky and Florida. Yes.

Hi, Katie. Katie Zacharia : Hello. We will take Peter Doocy.

Thanks, Katie.

Yes.

Nice to meet you. You're starting as White House press secretary three weeks before a midterm cycle that President Trump himself says will be very tough for Republicans. Is your job just to speak about White House matters, or is it to make things less tough for Republicans in the midterms?

Well, Peter, 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.

And I want to ask you a policy question. Has the US stopped sharing intel with Ukraine?

I'll have to get back to you on that. Elena Shirazi. Yes. Elena Shirazi.

Great. Hi. Congrats on the job.

Thank you.

First of all. And I have two questions for you if I can. First of all, on Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Daily Mail has been reporting on her since last year. The president said yesterday to reporters that he is considering firing her. Do you know a timeline for that, and also potentially who could be on the short list to replace her if he does?

We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.

Ok. Second question for you, if I may, a personal question. Your family is in California, your husband, you have four children. I'm wondering how you manage -- how are you going to manage that? Karoline Leavitt said that left because she wanted to spend more time with her family. And also, did she give you any advice on how to handle this job and the people in this room?

Well, first of all, I want to give my husband an amazing shout out. We have four kids ranging from 12, 10, 8, and 6; three of them are boys, so we have a handful. And I adore my family, I love them, they are my priority. I love being with my kids. The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable. So, my president -- excuse me, my husband -- that's a good one. My husband is out here -- he's out here for the week because we have two birthdays in our family and we are very, very protective of celebrating birthdays as a family. So, he brought the entire crew out here, bless him, it's a lot.

And we will be moving out here. And as far as your second question is, yes, Karoline has been an incredible support. She gave me great and wonderful feedback on how to balance. I think this job is not one you necessarily balance. And I would love to share that in my career I stayed home with my kids from 2014 to 2020 in the process of having them. And then when I started working again, I was able to integrate them into my life. There are many photos, of which are not public, of the kids and I at Fox Bureau, where they're sitting with me in the pod before a hit. So, I intend to, to the extent possible, include my family, include my kids in my work.

Though my work will be demanding, they will always be a priority. And President Trump is the most family friendly president we've ever had. He has hired more women with families. And the fact that he knew I had four kids and he knew that this job would be demanding and still placed his trust in me, shows that I know I'm capable of being able to step up to that. So, thank you for that question. In fact, I am going to end it because President Trump is heading out to Marine One for our historic trip to Alaska, and we can ask him all of the questions out there. So, thank you so much.

Katie, did the president speak with Ambassador Guilfoyle briefly?

To the question on -- the president will be back on Thursday, and that's what I will answer. I'll leave it there. He will answer those questions out in Marine One.