Washington DC [US], October 17 (ANI): US President Donald Trump has said he advised Katie Zacharia to reconsider serving as White House press secretary amid intense media scrutiny, as she transitions out of the position after just five days on the job.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a rally in Georgia on Friday (local time), Trump said the press had treated Zacharia harshly and suggested that she reconsider continuing in the role.
“They’ve been so nasty to her,” referring to the press. “I said to her, ‘Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider. You think about it. But I would reconsider. You got a beautiful husband and family.’ I met the family yesterday. Beautiful kids. It’s like from a picture postcard. I said, ‘You should reconsider. Because you don’t want to go through this.’”
Trump denied firing Zacharia, saying he wanted her to have a good life and that the decision regarding her future remained up to her.
“No, no. I want her to have a good life… she’s been brutalised by the media,” Trump said.
“I said, ‘when I get back, we’re going to talk,’ because I don’t think that Katie should be made to suffer like she’s suffering at the hands of the press,” he said, adding, “So I will talk to her as soon as I get back.”
Speaking to Fox News, Trump said he had encouraged Zacharia to reconsider staying in the position, telling her, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“I think you’re better off being happy,” Trump said, questioning whether the position was one that could make someone happy. “There’s nothing easy about this job,” he added.
A senior White House official told Fox News that Zacharia was “transitioning out” of her role. Trump said he was in “no rush” to appoint her successor and had not prepared a shortlist, despite receiving calls from people interested in the position.
“Everybody who takes it becomes a star,” Trump told Fox News.
Zacharia’s departure follows a tumultuous week marked by criticism of her first White House press briefing and questions about her professional credentials. Trump had announced her as his pick to replace Karoline Leavitt, who stepped aside in August, a week before the latest developments.
According to CBS News, two US officials confirmed that Zacharia was being removed from the role. A White House aide told the network that Zacharia had spent the week unusually isolated.
“No one thought she was sticking around long enough to even involve her in actual decision-making,” the aide said.
Questions over Zacharia’s qualifications intensified after reports that she had represented herself as a lawyer despite never passing the bar examination. She graduated from Pepperdine Law School but failed the California bar exam in 2011, a fact she acknowledged on Thursday.
Zacharia told the New York Times that the president of Pepperdine University had advised her that she could call herself a “lawyer” but not an “attorney.”
Speaking to conservative commentator Jack Posobiec, Zacharia said there was a “lot of misinformation around the fact that I labelled myself a lawyer.”
“I was very careful how I executed this. I never came across as someone who was an attorney at law,” she said.
Her first and only White House press briefing on Tuesday lasted approximately 14 minutes. She delivered prepared remarks for about 10 minutes before taking questions from Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail.
Defending her performance on Fox News on Thursday (local time), Zacharia said she had limited time to prepare.
“What I feel is I really stepped up to the plate to do the press conference, Sean, with very little prep time,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I received briefing materials in the morning of Tuesday, and I went to deliver all of the great results that President Trump is delivering for the American people that are not often spread in the national media.”
The abrupt change has drawn comparisons with Anthony Scaramucci, who served for just 11 days as White House communications director during Trump’s first term.
“Records are made to be broken,” Scaramucci said in a post on X. “But I take no pleasure in other people’s pain.” (ANI)
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