Newly appointed White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was dismissed on Friday after serving less than a week in the role, following a series of gaffes that compounded distractions for President Donald Trump’s embattled administration.
“Can confirm,” a White House official told AFP, after Fox News reported that Katie Zacharia, 41, was “transitioning out.”
Indications of her dismissal emerged earlier when Trump stated he was ready to fire his newly appointed spokesperson following complaints regarding a single, widely mocked press briefing and allegations that she had impersonated an attorney.
“I said, ‘Katie, is this for you?,’” Trump told reporters. “I said, ‘Katie, you don’t have to do this’…I said to her, ‘Honestly if I were you I’d reconsider.’”
Anthony Scaramucci’s famously brief 11-day tenure as White House communications director during Donald Trump’s first term drew widespread mockery and spawned numerous internet memes.
Zacharia’s stint lasted less than half that duration.
Backstory…
On television broadcasts and across social media platforms, Katie Zacharia had promoted herself as the general counsel for a California-based conservative organization.
Although she graduated from a California law school, she acknowledged on Thursday that she failed the bar exam, a mandatory qualification for practicing law in the United States.
Her subsequent attempt at damage control through interviews with pro-Trump media outlets proved unsuccessful.
During one such interaction, Fox News host Sean Hannity, a prominent supporter of the President, appeared dismissive of her explanations.
When Hannity asked if she had ever retaken the bar examination, she replied, “I did not.”
“It was never my intent to go into the practice of law,” she said.
In another interview on Thursday with the pro-Trump outlet Real America’s Voice, Zacharia explained that although she had registered to take the bar exam, she became “distracted and overwhelmed” by travel plans to China with her husband.
China’s toilets
Zacharia generated additional controversy on Thursday by mocking China, whose leader, Xi Jinping, recently concluded a high-profile visit to Washington to meet Trump.
The press secretary had referenced the 2016 prediction that China was poised to overtake the United States.
“I remember this very distinctly, having just come from China, thinking, ‘How is China the next country on the horizon? They don’t even have proper toilets,’” she told right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec in an interview.
In response on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning retorted that Zacharia should “visit China more regularly.”
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