Trump tells new White ​House ⁠press secretary ​Katie Zacharia she should ‘reconsider’ ​role

US ​President Donald ​Trump said on Friday he ​told ​new White ​House ⁠Press Secretary ​Katie Zacharia she should reconsider ​her role.

He added ​that ‌the ​White House’s spokesperson role ‌may ​not be for ⁠Zacharia.

It came as Fox News cited a White House official as saying Zacharia was “transitioning out of the role”.

The embattled White House press secretary earlier said that no one in the Trump administration ever asked about her legal credentials after it emerged that she never passed the bar exam despite previously describing herself as an attorney.

Zacharia appeared Friday on Fox & Friends, where she appeared to throw President Donald Trump under the bus and raised questions about the vetting process. She was forced to admit she never passed the bar exam after describing herself as a lawyer in more than a dozen TV appearances amid pressure to clarify her credentials.

The California native and mother of four has been doing damage control on Fox News but was not served the softball questions usually reserved for Republicans and Trump officials.

Co-host Lawrence Jones, though, was almost apologetic in asking Zacharia whether she regretted not informing the president that she never passed the bar exam.

“Do you wish you would have disclosed to the president about the bar and not passing the bar?” he asked Zacharia.

“Yeah, well Lawrence, those questions weren’t asked,” she said, seemingly throwing it back on Trump and his advisers.

“I’m being hired as White House press secretary, not White House counsel.”

Zacharia’s response prompted more questions from strategists and journalists about the vetting process.

“Fox News isn’t treating her with kid gloves. It doesn’t bode well for Katie’s future,” said Republican strategist Melik Abdul. “My guess is that her sophomore performance will have to be far more superior and convincing than her first. Otherwise, she will be fired and deserves it for compromising Trump.”

Breitbart reporter John Binder said that the press secretary’s comments “seemed to confirm” a Daily Mail report that Zacharia was not fully vetted.

The White House referred to Zacharia’s comments when asked about the vetting process.

In the same Fox & Friends segment, Zacharia struggled to answer whether she still has the confidence of the president after a tough first week in the job.

“Do you think you still have the confidence of the president?” Jones asked Zacharia, but the press secretary floundered.

“Err, I…I’m standing here and I was able to travel with him through all of the midterm convention, excuse me, the midterm rallies,” Zacharia said. “And I hope to be able to build the trust and confidence of everyone around me.”

Trump referred to Zacharia as an “attorney” in his Truth Social post announcing her to the role.

Following her 14-minute press briefing debut on Tuesday, where Zacharia only took three questions before pulling the plug, Trump gave her the opportunity to answer a question about where she passed the bar exam before they boarded Marine One.

“When I moved to China,” Zacharia replied, causing confusion. She later said that she misheard the question and thought a reporter asked, “Where were you after law school?”

Zacharia received an unexpected grilling from Fox News anchor Sean Hannity Thursday, who is close with Trump, leaving critics stunned and saying they had never seen the conservative presenter press a Republican, let alone a Trump White House official, so hard.

“Hannity is moving in for the kill,” observed journalist Aaron Rupar on X, while The Bulwark’s Will Sommer commented, “This is the toughest interview I’ve ever seen Sean Hannity give to a Republican.”

New White House press secretary Katie Zacharia defended her legal background and justified her truncated inaugural briefing as she navigates a rocky first week as US President Donald Trump’s chief spokeswoman.

Ms Zacharia sat down for an interview on Thursday with the conservative Human Events outlet.

In it, she said she did not have time to get fully prepared ahead of her first briefing on Tuesday and that it was always the plan to keep it short because Mr Trump would field questions from journalists later that morning.

“It was absolutely my goal to keep it short, considering he is his own best spokesperson, and he would love, and does love, gaggling with the media as he goes to Marine One,” Ms Zacharia said.

“So I wanted to give ample deference and not barge into his time.”

The initial briefing materials were given to Ms Zacharia on Monday evening, then completed on Tuesday at 8am, less than two hours before she would appear before the White House press corps.

She had been up since 3am preparing, Ms Zacharia said.

“I never had a full briefing beforehand, and I went out and I effectuated the briefing,” she said.

As for her legal background, Ms Zacharia said she was preparing to take the bar exam in California at a time that she had just gotten married and was readying a move to China to join her new husband, who had been working in private equity in Beijing.

“I was obviously incredibly distracted and overwhelmed and excited for finally being married to someone who I’d been long distance from for at least a year,” Ms Zacharia said.

She said the results of the bar exam, which she did not pass, were “somewhat inconsequential” because she would not need to be a barred lawyer while living in China.

Ms Zacharia, who has been under scrutiny for calling herself a “lawyer”, said she consulted several legal experts to ensure that title was accurate when offering legal analysis.

“It’s unfortunate that people dub this as some kind of conspiracy or want to put me in a camp.

“The truth is, I was very careful how I executed this, and I never came across as someone who was an attorney-at-law.”

She will not weigh in on legal matters in her White House capacity, Ms Zacharia said.

She also divulged details of how she went about securing the White House press secretary job.

Ms Zacharia stressed that she did not want to be seen as lobbying for the position, left vacant when Karoline Leavitt announced she would depart the administration to spend more time with her family.

Ms Zacharia, who was a communications adviser for the company that runs Truth Social, said she closely monitored the president’s social media posts to determine what was top of mind for him, then would go on air to talk about those topics.

“My philosophy is, I’m on TV enough where if he sees me and he likes me, then I will be recruited for the job.

“I do not believe that lobbying for that job would have been successful, and I wanted to work for it.

“I wanted to audition for it.”

Then on October 7, as Ms Zacharia was preparing to take one of her children to a pumpkin patch, she received a phone call from Mr Trump about the press secretary position.

She promptly flew out the next day from her home in California to Washington, met with the president about the job on Friday and formally accepted the position later that day.