Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after just 5 days on the job
NBC News · LC · trust 45/100
A senior administration official said that Zacharia is transitioning into a new role that would be announced at a later date.
The news follows Zacharia’s widely panned first press briefing and the revelation that she represented herself as a lawyer but did not pass her bar exam.
Zacharia leaves the position as she entered it: quickly. President Donald Trump’s quick elevation of her from conservative media commentator to the high-profile White House job was a surprise. The president announced her appointment on Friday and she gave her first briefing on Tuesday morning, right after a three-day holiday weekend.
Her sudden exit will leave a key White House communications role vacant less than three weeks before the midterm elections as Trump has complained publicly that his administration and party are suffering because of bad public relations.
“Our country has never done better,” he told supporters at a rally in Durant, Oklahoma, this month. “We cannot get the word across because of the fake news and because ... we’re doing a great job in running the country, but we’re not doing a good job of public relations.”
After Zacharia’s departure, though, two sources familiar with the president’s thinking told NBC News on Friday that it is highly unlikely that Trump will select a new press secretary any time soon.
Earlier Friday, Trump said he would let Zacharia decide whether to remain as his press secretary after he suggested she was treated harshly by the media during her first week on the job.
“She’s been treated, I would say pretty nastily, and I said to Katie just two minutes ago, I said, Katie, you know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want,” Trump said.
Asked if he would keep her on the job, the president said, “I’m going to let her make that decision.”
Trump also said that if he were in her shoes, he’d “reconsider” and said he would be having a conversation with her later about her situation.
Zacharia is scheduled to have dinner Friday with Vice President JD Vance and his family at his residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., two sources familiar with the matter said.
Zacharia held her first brief press briefing on Tuesday, just one day after she started the job, and came under scrutiny after she had represented herself as a lawyer but acknowledged this week that she did not pass her bar exam following law school.
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Zacharia had succeeded Karoline Leavitt , who left the White House position at the end of August after serving in the role since the beginning of Trump’s term in January 2025.
Before her extraordinarily brief stint at the White House, Zacharia made a name for herself as a…
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