WASHINGTON – Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary, according to people familiar with the matter, just a week after President Trump announced her appointment to the high-profile role.
On Friday, Trump said he had suggested that Zacharia consider leaving the job. “I said, ‘Is this for you Katie? Because honestly, you don’t need this,’” Trump told reporters, adding that she had been treated “very rough” by the media.
The president said he spoke to Zacharia earlier on Friday, just prior to his comments to reporters as he left the White House for a rally in Georgia. He said he counseled her, “Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider.”
Zacharia’s first press briefing Tuesday was shaky, and her claims to be a lawyer have come under close examination following Trump’s announcement last week that he had chosen the conservative commentator to replace former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
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The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that even though Zacharia repeatedly referred to herself as a lawyer, and Trump called her an attorney in announcing her appointment, she didn’t pass the bar exam when she took it in California in 2011 and isn’t licensed in the U.S.
Zacharia said in an interview on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” on Friday that she wasn’t asked whether she had passed the bar before she accepted the role. A White House official said Zacharia wasn’t hired by the president to work on legal matters.
During her debut at the White House podium on Tuesday, Zacharia spoke in a stilted cadence while reading out a list of Trump’s accomplishments and discussing her excitement for the job. She looked down at her notes rather than at the camera, repeated words and paused to find her place.