Katie Zacharia is exiting her job as White House Press Secretary after just five days in the position, according to a person familiar with the situation. President Donald Trump on Friday said to reporters that he told Zacharia to reconsider her role, amid reports that she had already been relieved of the job.
“I said to her honestly, if I were you, I'd reconsider,” Trump said outside of the White House, adding, “Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.”
Trump said that the decision was ultimately hers, and that he would speak with Zacharia following a trip to Georgia. “I just want her to be happy,” he said.
Zacharia’s brief stint as press secretary is bound to draw comparisons to Anthony Scaramucci’s 11-day run as Trump's White House communications director in 2017. Then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired Scaramucci after he had given a fiery interview to The New Yorker in which he attacked his colleagues. In Washington parlance, the tenures of prominent White House officials have since been jokingly measured in “Scaramuccis.”
Trump said that Zacharia has been treated “pretty nastily” and “very unfairly” by the media since taking over for former Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“I said you should reconsider because you don't want to go through this,” he said in reference to the critical media response Zacharia received following her first press briefing on Tuesday.
Trump called Zacharia “an attorney” in his Truth Social post announcing her position, and Zacharia has described herself as a lawyer. But when asked by a reporter where she had passed the bar, Zacharia responded “when I moved to China.” She later said that she had misheard the question. Zacharia then acknowledged while speaking on Fox that she had failed the bar exam.
"You went to Pepperdine law school but you did not pass the bar exam, correct?" Fox host Sean Hannity asked Zacharia on Thursday.
"Correct," Zacharia replied.
When asked whether she regretted never having told the White House that she failed the bar, Zacharia responded “those questions weren’t asked,” and “I’m being hired as White House press secretary, not White House counsel.”
Zacharia previously worked as a general counsel at a the conservative non-profit Fix California. She also has experience working as a communications adviser at Trump Media and Technology Group, which houses the President’s social media platform Truth Social. She previously worked as a spokesperson for former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and is a regular on conservative media outlets like Fox News and Newsmax.
Zacharia received a wave of criticism following her first press briefing, which lasted just 14 minutes and during which she only took questions from three reporters.
Leavitt, the youngest press secretary in White House history, stepped down in August after returning from maternity leave. She recently joined Fox News as an on-air contributor.