Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after only five days on the job, with President Trump himself telling reporters he wasn’t sure the role was right for her.
Zacharia first stood at the podium on Tuesday, taking over after Karoline Leavitt departed in August. The debut did not go well. Reporters criticized her nervous demeanor and noted she called on only three reporters during the entire briefing.
“Brutal,” one White House correspondent told Fox News Digital.
A second correspondent said the writing was on the wall almost immediately. “I knew she was out two minutes into her prepared remarks on Tuesday,” the reporter said. “It was just too drastically different from Karoline. We were all shocked after.” The reporter added that Leavitt “set a new standard for press secretaries” and that “you can’t just be hot and good on TV.”
A third correspondent said they were caught off guard Trump hired her at all, given his usual instinct for picking people with “it.” “There is no excuse for Katie’s first briefing performance,” the reporter said. “No one expected her to have all the answers, or even most of them. But I expected basic communication skills that were simply not there.”
A fourth reporter offered a more measured take: “She probably could have been better than Karine Jean-Pierre if she had more time to prepare. But it was a brutal start.”
Résumé questions compounded the problem
Beyond the shaky briefing, Zacharia’s repeated claims to have worked as a lawyer drew scrutiny and may have done more lasting damage than her performance at the podium. The fourth reporter called the résumé issue a “bigger threat” to her than the briefing itself.
A fifth correspondent placed blame on both sides. Zacharia, the reporter said, deserves little sympathy for taking a job she was “manifestly unqualified for” while knowing her embellished résumé would eventually surface. But the reporter also faulted Trump directly: “He was clearly getting antsy and impulsive. He wanted his new press secretary now, and he wasn’t going to let mean old Susie Wiles tell him to wait while she convinced someone more competent and more prepared for one of the hardest jobs in government to actually take that job.”
That correspondent pointed to current communications staffers Anna Kelly and Lauren Bis as capable alternatives who simply don’t fit Trump’s preference for telegenic hires. “He took someone who seemed like a nice young woman who was defending him on TV, doing an okay job of that, and subjected her to a massive amount of humiliation and made her a national laughingstock because he didn’t want to be told no,” the reporter said. “I don’t want to say he ruined her life, but she’s gonna be a punchline for a very long time. And that’s not fair.”
A sixth correspondent argued the identity of the press secretary barely matters under this administration. “Trump lies every day about everything and frequently changes his mind completely, leaving his staff looking foolish,” the reporter said.
A messaging problem two weeks before midterms
NBC News White House correspondent Garrett Haake tied the episode to a larger communications breakdown inside the administration with the midterms approaching. “The ouster of now-former Press Sec Katie Zacharia highlights a bigger problem for the Trump White House two weeks til the midterms: They’re struggling to drive any message,” Haake wrote on X. “Meandering rallies, staff stories taking up oxygen, long hard-to-hear gaggles, no briefings.”
White House communications director Steven Cheung pushed back on the reporters’ reaction. “There is nothing more cringe than a bunch of reporters cackling amongst themselves because they’ll never have the talent to take on a job as important as Press Secretary,” Cheung told Fox News Digital. “It’s easy to sling arrows at others, but when they are on the receiving end, they’ll complain like it’s the end of the world. Reporters have the thinnest skin.”
Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy reported Friday that Zacharia is “transitioning out” of the job. Trump told reporters he had raised the question with her directly. “I just spoke to her about it. I said, ‘Katie, is this really for you?'” Trump said. “I said to her, ‘Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider. You think about it.'” He later added, “Maybe it’s not for her.”
The search for a permanent press secretary continues following Leavitt’s August departure. Leavitt has since joined Fox News as a contributor.
