Katie Zacharia, Trump’s New Press Secretary, Is Ousted After 5 Days
New York Times · LC · trust 28/100
Her abrupt departure came after she was shadowed by questions about how she had presented her legal career and handled her first press briefing.
Listen · 5:10 min Share full article 560 Katie Zacharia during her first briefing at the White House on Tuesday. She was ousted on Friday. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times By Shawn McCreesh Tyler Pager and Hamed Aleaziz
Ms. Zacharia, who had gained Mr. Trump’s attention as a conservative commentator, had gotten off to a shaky start with her first and only press briefing on Tuesday. She largely read off a script and ended questioning after just five and a half minutes. That was followed by an onslaught of headlines about whether she had misrepresented herself as a lawyer — the president called her “an attorney” — despite failing her bar exam.
Subsequent interviews she gave in the media, in which she tried to defend herself by pointing out how unprepared she had been to go before the Washington press corps, also went poorly.
Finally, after days of unrelenting press coverage, the Trump administration decided on Friday afternoon to do something it almost never does: It folded.
Mr. Trump was walking across the South Lawn to depart for a midterm rally in Georgia when he stopped to talk to reporters, telling them how he’d just encouraged his press secretary to “reconsider” her new job.
“Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider,” he told the reporters, recounting his conversation with her. “Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.”
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