Former White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia clashed with veteran BBC journalist Victoria Derbyshire in an interview where they discussed the recent midterm elections and Pete Hegseth, in a heated exchange that Zacharia posted online.
Derbyshire asked Zacharia about recent statements made by President Donald Trump following the GOP’s sweeping defeats in the 2026 midterm elections. “Last week he said the Democrats did pretty well; he said he was going to work with them. Several days later, he’s suggesting there’s something wrong with the elections. What’s changed?”
Zacharia replied: “Do you think that Dan Sullivan in Alaska is fair?”
The shortest-serving White House press secretary in U.S. history was pointing to the contentious Alaska Senate race, where ballots are still being counted. In the race, the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan is seeking reelection against Democratic challenger Mary Peltola. Also on the ballot is the independent candidate Daniel J. Sullivan.
There being two Dan Sullivans on the ballot has prompted scrutiny and accusations that Democrats had tried to confuse voters, allegations which have been denied.
In the interview, Zacharia pressed Derbyshire on the Alaska race, and the two frequently talked over each other in the clip.
“Does questioning if the election was honest mean that the president is now at odds with his vice president, who clearly said, in a long social media post, it was because of the Iran war, why Republicans lost?” Derbyshire asked Zacharia.
In response, Zacharia again brought up the Alaska Senate race, and Derbyshire responded by asking, “Why didn’t JD Vance mention the Sullivans, and Alaska?”
Zacharia interrupted and said: “You don’t want to answer the question because you know it’s not fair. You know that that was a setup. It is so clearly a set-up, and that is why it is being investigated right now. And that should be, across the pond, being questioned just as much as anywhere else in the world.”
Zacharia took up the podium in October, but the conservative commentator held the position for only five days before she was fired by Trump following a widely scrutinized first press briefing , where she spoke for 14 minutes and took questions from only three outlets.
A permanent replacement has not yet been found, months after Karoline Leavitt stepped down from the post in August.
In the 2026 midterm elections, the GOP faced crushing losses as Democrats took control of the House and the Senate, following shock victories in Republican strongholds like Texas, South Carolina and Kansas.
A week after the elections, races in Mississippi and Alaska remain too close to call. While the contentious topic of the two Dan Sullivans has been a focal point of criticism, as of reporting on Wednesday morning, with 84 percent of votes counted, Peltola’s lead in the race is now greater than the combined number of votes of her Republican rival and the independent candidate.
Zacharia was staunch in her opinion during the interview that the midterms were “not even a setback” for Trump.
Derbyshire countered that the president has looked at times in the past week like he has “lost his mojo,” and asked how he would cope with being a “loser.”
“Absolutely not a loser,” Zacharia replied. When pressed again by Derbyshire, Zacharia pointed to the fact that in midterm elections, the party in the White House historically loses seats.
“Regardless of the outcome, he is the fighter in chief,” Zacharia said.
The effort to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was also discussed.
House Republicans successfully blocked an attempt to impeach him on Tuesday. A motion to refer Republican Rep. Thomas Massie ’s eight articles of impeachment to committee passed in the House, 211-204, with only Massie crossing party lines to join Democrats voting against the motion.
That vote means that the eight articles of impeachment will not advance to the Senate, and Hegseth will remain in office.
After the House vote, the Pentagon declared “total victory” shortly.
The interview was recorded ahead of the impeachment effort. Derbyshire asked if Hegseth should resign so that Trump does not have to keep defending him.
“Pete Hegseth should absolutely not resign,” Zacharia said. “He absolutely did what any secretary of war or secretary of defense would do in these circumstances.”
The Newsnight interview wasn’t the only high-profile media moment of the evening for Zacharia.
The conservative commentator was the subject of a segment on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Fallon began the segment by saying, “The former White House press secretary Katie Zacharia is auditioning again for the job, despite being fired after only five days.”
The segment then cuts to someone doing an impersonation of Zacharia.
That person is asked by Fallon if they think they are the most qualified for the job, to which they responded, “One hundred percently.”
The impersonator then answered a series of simple political questions asked by Fallon in a comically poor fashion.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and Cristina Diciu.