Trump’s Press Secretary Leaves After Five Days in the Job
Katie Zacharia is leaving the post of White House press secretary five days after a 14-minute debut briefing in which she took three questions; a White House official told the Guardian she had been fired. Moments before her exit was announced, Mr Trump said he had told her: “Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider.” She had admitted she never passed the bar exam.
Ms Zacharia, a little-known conservative commentator, replaced Karoline Leavitt and says she was hired less than a week before her first briefing, at which she referred to her husband as “the president”. Even friendly interviewers turned on her: Sean Hannity asked bluntly, “What happened?” Her departure is the swiftest in Mr Trump’s press operation, beating Anthony Scaramucci’s ten days in the first term; he wrote: “Records are made to be broken.” With November’s midterms approaching, Democrats are using it as evidence of disarray; Hakeem Jeffries posted: “The White House Press Secretary is gone. Maga extremists continue to fall apart.”