Katie Zacharia is transitioning out as White House press secretary after less than a week after a turbulent start to the high-profile job.
The news came shortly after President Trump on the South Lawn told her she didn’t have to keep the job if she didn’t want it, that he didn’t think she needed it, and that he wanted her to have a good life. He’d talk to her again after Georgia and leave it up to her, the AP reported.
Her first briefing was described as a “shitstorm” and “hard to watch by sources close to the White House. She then came under fire for referring to herself as a lawyer despite not passing the bar exam.
Following a rough couple of days, Zacharia appeared on Hannity where she was pressed to clarify the claims that she was an attorney on Thursday night. It did not go smoothly.
She said she took the California bar once after Pepperdine, failed, and never tried again. He went on to ask why she hadn’t just said she went to law school and did something else instead of splitting “lawyer” and “attorney.” She said the posts calling her an attorney were mostly retweets. Trump had called her an attorney when he hired her.
Following her rocky start, memes of whether she would last longer than a head of lettuce or make it past the length of Anthony Scaramucci’s 11 day tenure during the first Trump administration began to emerge.
Scaroochi quote tweeted Joe Scarborough’s “we hardly knew ye” post expressing sympathy for Zachaia, adding that records are made to be broken, and he “takes no pleasure in other people’s pain.”
No permanent replacement has been named. Names that circulated after former Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt left included Alina Habba, Scott Jennings and principal deputy Anna Kelly.
