One week after President Donald Trump named Katie Zacharia White House press secretary, he's publicly showing her the door.
Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn Friday, Trump revealed he'd already had a heart-to-heart with his new spokeswoman. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to… I think you should reconsider," Trump told her.
Then he twisted the knife a little further. "Maybe it's not for her.”
I would use a stronger word than maybe, to be honest.
When a reporter asked whether that meant Zacharia was fired, Trump tapped the brakes. "No no. I want her to have a good life," he said. "She's been brutalized by the media."
And yes, that’s true, and much of it is deserved. But the same media that gave endless coverage to her poor performance on Tuesday gushed over Karine Jean Pierre despite being equally as bad, just because Jean-Pierre was a Black Lesbian Woman™ and the daughter of immigrants. But she was so terrible at the job that the White House brought in then-Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, a white man, to babysit her. Joe Biden couldn’t even fire her because of the optics of firing a Black Lesbian Woman™ holding such a “historic” post.
Trump tapped Zacharia last week to replace Karoline Leavitt, and on paper, the résumé looked solid enough. She'd been a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, and before that she served as a deputy assistant secretary for public affairs and a spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security. Then she stepped behind the podium on Tuesday, and the wheels came off almost immediately.
Her first briefing lasted all of 14 minutes. She took questions from three journalists. She leaned on her notes constantly. At one point, she called her husband "my president" before catching herself. For comparison, Leavitt's debut ran nearly forty-seven minutes, and it was amazing right off the bat.
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But Zacharia’s poor performance became the least of her problems after it was revealed she’d been calling herself a lawyer for years despite not having passed the bar exam, and subsequent media interviews only made things worse.
Inside the White House, the knives were already out. An unnamed official told MS NOW that Zacharia might not even outlast Anthony Scaramucci, who survived just ten days as Trump's communications director before getting the boot in July 2017.
"Getting behind the podium is tough, but she got off on the wrong foot," the official said. "She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she'll break Scaramucci's record."
White House communications director Steven Cheung tried to tamp down the speculation on Wednesday. Asked by Fox News Digital about the Scaramucci comparison, he rushed to her defense. "Katie is a fabulous and wonderful addition to the team," Cheung said. "She is uniquely qualified and whip smart… and she will do an incredible job as Press Secretary."
And now Trump has suggested she reconsider the job.
Ouch.
I wasn't impressed by Zacharia at all, and she simply isn't cutting it for President Trump. Frankly, she should have been better at this job. Somebody either vetted her poorly or didn't vet her at all.
The White House briefing room has no patience for on-the-job training, and it shouldn't. Every day at that podium, the press secretary speaks for the president to the entire country, and every stumble hands his enemies in the media a free shot.