Katie Zacharia was forced out as White House press secretary on Friday after five days on the job. Zacharia had just started on Monday and had not even moved to Washington yet.
According to the NYT, Trump was walking across the South Lawn to leave for a midterm rally in Georgia when he stopped to talk to reporters. He told them he had asked his press secretary to “reconsider” her job.
“Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider,” he told the reporters, recounting his talk with her. “Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.”
Katie Zacharia pushed for Fox News appearances
Text messages obtained by The New York Post show that Katie Zacharia herself pushed for two Fox News appearances. They were set for Thursday and Friday, after her rocky first briefing at the White House.
“I’d like to do news hits morning and evening,” Zacharia wrote on Wednesday to a White House official. The Post said the bookings were pushed back by a day.
{{/usCountry}}“I’d like to do news hits morning and evening,” Zacharia wrote on Wednesday to a White House official. The Post said the bookings were pushed back by a day.
{{/usCountry}}According to The Post, the texts show she was looking for TV time as early as Tuesday, the day of her first briefing. A Hannity producer wrote that day, “Katie said she can join us from the rally tonight.”
Also read: Katie Zacharia out as White House press secretary after just 5 days on the job: Reports
She was interviewed by Sean Hannity on Thursday night and then by “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning. As per reports, she struggled to explain why she failed the California bar and could not go beyond talking points on other issues. Hannity asked her a few tough questions and treated her with rare doubt, and that the Friday show was not friendly either.
Hannity asked if she thought the staff should have prepped her better. Zacharia had told him: “Given the fact that I’d been on the job less than maybe eight hours and had a briefing book in the morning, I feel like I did my very best, Sean, to deliver for the American people that day.”
On Friday, host Lawrence Jones asked her, “Do you wish you would have disclosed to the president about the bar and not passing the bar?”
“Well, Lawrence,” Zacharia responded, “those questions weren’t asked,” as per the NYT.
One source in a Politico story called the interviews a “sanctioned hit.” That suggested White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles planned them, as she did not approve the hiring in advance. But The Post said the texts do not show Wiles had any role in the TV appearances.
Also read: One briefing, scrutiny over bar qualification preceded Katie Zacharia's swift White House exit
Shaky start, quick exit
Trump offered Katie Zacharia the job last Friday. She was a little-known, unpaid Fox News commentator and a surprise pick. Her first and only briefing was on Tuesday. She mostly read from a script and ended questions after five and a half minutes. Headlines then asked whether she had wrongly presented herself as a lawyer, even though she failed her bar exam.
Former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox on Saturday, as per The Post: “That was pretty much doomed from the start to roll out to the press.”
In a social media post late Friday, Zacharia wrote that it “was an honor to work for” Trump.