Katie Zacharia and Pyongyang on the Potomac
The Bulwark · C · trust 39/100
North Korean state media in the White House Briefing Room.
Jonathan V. Last October 14 ∙ Paid Upgrade to listen 8 minute s 271 60 25 October Surprise: 30% OFF Bulwark+ for a year. Upgrade now. Who wore it better—Avery Jessup or Katie Zacharia? (Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/ The Bulwark | Photo: Getty) 1. Katy! Kati! Katie! Everyone is dunking on Katie Zacharia’s debut as White House press secretary. And fair enough. It was extra, super-duper, not-great.
Will she make it a full Scaramucci!?!? America can’t wait to find out!
But I want us to look a little deeper. Because as ridiculous as she may be, Katie Zacharia is another consequence of Trumpism: the transformation of the White House press room into a simulacrum of the Korean Central News Agency.
Walk with me through the press conference, beat by beat.
Zacharia spoke for a few minutes before taking seven questions from the “press.”
The first two questions came from Breitbart News. Breitbart is indistinguishable from a state-run organ. How tightly is the company tied to Donald Trump?
In 2016, Trump hired Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon to run his presidential campaign and, after he won, made Bannon his chief White House strategist. In 2016, the Mercer family—part of the Breitbart ownership group— gave $3.4 million to “Trump’s campaign, the Republican Party and a family super PAC that backed the businessman’s presidential bid and was run by Kellyanne Conway.” You will recall that Kellyanne Conway would go on to work in Trump’s White House, too.
The second questioner was from Fox News. Peter Doocy asked one policy question—“Has the U.S. stopped sharing intel with Ukraine?”—for which Zacharia had no answer. That exchange took less than seven seconds and came after his much longer exchange with Zacharia, taking more than a minute, in which he asked Zacharia about herself. (More on this in a moment.)
Again, remember the context: Like Breitbart, Fox News is functionally state-controlled. Fox’s independence is so nonexistent that its “journalists” routinely function as informal advisers to Trump. See the rich history of texts between the Trump administrations and Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo . And that’s the unofficial pipeline. At least twenty-three Fox “journalists,” contributors, and other alumni were hired by the administration this term alone.
Never forget: Fox isn’t just partisan or compromised . The network was willing to pay $787 million in damages so that it could support Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Fox isn’t “journalism.” It’s not even a “business.” It’s a state-directed propaganda outlet with cable carriage fees and an ad sales team.
The third questioner was from NewsNation, a young cable outlet that depicts itself as centrist and does give airtime to an eclectic collection of hosts and contributors—but that has increasingly tilted toward the right . And the reporter asked a question that appeared to have been planted by the White House.
We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.
So that’s your White House briefing room. Largely fluff questions from state-aligned media, and then a rightward-tilting media outlet regurgitating a question that sure looks like it was given to them by the White House .
Hold on to your butts, though. It gets worse.
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