Katie Zacharia ouster recalls turbulence of Trump’s first administration

Donald Trump’s second presidency, it was said, would not be like the first. He was back after a period in the wilderness, but with lessons learned; this time he was surrounded by an army of loyalists and not, as in 2017, by a team of aides willing to disagree with him now and then. Nor would it once again be a nonstop spectacle of leaks, backstage betrayals and impulsive firings communicated through social media.

This past week, however, the White House slid back into an old‑style chaos with the unexpected spectacle of the departure—after just five days in office—of the newly appointed press spokeswoman, Katie Zacharia.

Trump announced her appointment on his social network Truth two Fridays ago. She showed up for her first day on the job on Monday. On Tuesday she held a short, jittery 14‑minute press briefing. Clearly improvised and poorly prepared, the debut was enough for Washington to start betting on how long Zacharia would last in the West Wing.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent in damage control mode. She ultimately confirmed the reports that she had lied on her résumé by claiming to be an attorney— although she does hold a law degree, she never passed the bar exam required to practice law. She did so in separate interviews with conservative outlets that treated her with a harshness she perhaps did not expect.

On Fox News’ morning magazine and in a chance encounter with reporters at the White House, Zacharia repeated on Friday, flashing one of the broad smiles that have lit up her 15 minutes of fame, that working for Trump was a “dream come true” and that she was willing to give everything for him. Shortly after, the president of the United States dismissed her in a particularly cruel way.

First he told reporters he had advised Zacharia to quit the job if she wanted to be happy. Then the White House leaked to the media that the new spokeswoman was on her way out. Before long, she was out the door.

Her exit caps a turbulent week in the White House. It began with the resignation of Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece amid corruption allegations; Guilfoyle is the former fiancée of the president’s eldest son. It continued with the departure from the State Department of another ally, Paolo Zampolli, known for having introduced Trump to his current wife, Melania. It reached a climax with a dispute—one that forced the boss to intervene—between two other loyal partners: former Venezuela envoy Richard Grenell and the lawyer Alina Habba.

Habba accuses Grenell of having kept nearly $6 million that her husband, a Turkish investor named Turhan Mildon, gave to the Kennedy Center. In the background are the business interests of both men in the phenomenal opportunities opened up in post‑Maduro Venezuela.

This was also the week The Washington Post reported that internal maneuvers are multiplying to remove Susie Wiles, the chief of staff and Trump’s right hand, after the midterm elections. With her unassuming appearance and discretion, Wiles—whose daughter is also at the center of a scandal over her business dealings in Bosnia and Herzegovina—is (or was) the image of stability in this White House; the woman who brought some order to a post that saw four officeholders during Trump’s first term (compared with two in Joe Biden’s four years in office).

The president did not consult Wiles about hiring Zacharia. When Zacharia took the podium on Tuesday to speak—nervous, eyes on her papers and without answers to many questions—it had been 47 days since someone in that role had last faced reporters. That was Karoline Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary in history. She left in August after 17 months on the job and a sterling MAGA record.

Trump did not feel any urgency to replace her until the midterms began to loom close—elections that do not look good for the Republicans. The appointment of Zacharia was a decision he made personally, according to White House sources cited by U.S. media, after growing tired of being presented with one disappointing candidate after another.

He is probably the president who has done the most to act as his own communications director in this country’s history, but even Trump needs someone to defend his policies in the briefing room when his approval ratings and the polls are in free fall. If, as the polls indicate, the Democrats are poised to retake one or both chambers, then a battering‑ram like Leavitt—always ready to attack opponents, flatter friendly outlets and defend the indefensible, even with lies when necessary—would be even more valuable.

For Trump, it was enough in his peculiar selection process to see Zacharia on television always ready to speak well of him and his unpopular policies. It is well known that the combination of telegenic appeal and blind loyalty is irresistible to the president of the United States.

So it makes sense that what sealed her fate was not her first disastrous press briefing. It was not even the scandal over her overstated résumé (which, for someone as mendacious as Trump, could hardly be disqualifying). It was seeing her on not one but two Fox News programs, unable to withstand a fusillade of friendly‑fire attacks.

Interview cut short

Just hours after she was shown the door, The Wall Street Journal published an interview they had done with Zacharia earlier, on Friday morning. It is a brutal piece in which it is clear the spokeswoman had no idea she was about to be fired.

The article says she “projected calm” in her newly furnished office with just a few personal touches: a white orchid, a hair curler and a pair of heels on a shelf next to a toiletry bag. It also notes she had slept three hours, because the day before was the birthday of one of her four children and she got up early to prepare for the interview that started her day on the wrong foot.

Midway through the interview someone knocks on the door to tell her that Vice President J. D. Vance wants to speak with her. She never got back to the reporters. Meanwhile, Trump goes out to meet journalists at the White House helipad to deliver the thumbs‑down on Zacharia’s future.

Besides reviving memories of the chaos of Trump’s first presidency, this week’s goings-on also served to refocus attention on Anthony Scaramucci, who was White House communications director and lasted 11 days in the post. On Tuesday he coined, amid the scandal, a new unit of measurement: the scaramucci. By that metric, Zacharia survived only 0.45 scaramuccis. “Records are meant to be broken,” he wrote on Friday.

Now a Trump critic, he also posted another message on X in which he raised his voice about Washington—one of whose favorite sports is piling on the fallen—and advised the ousted spokeswoman to “turn off the news and go enjoy your family. In time you’ll realize that the Universe did you a major favor:”

Her future plans have not emerged, but at least we know she will not have to move back from Washington to California: she did not have time to move to the capital in the first place. It is also unclear how much of Scaramucci’s example she plans to follow, although for now she does not seem inclined to join him on the other side of the mirror, where anti‑Trump converts wait.

On the contrary, Zacharia ended her fifth and final day at the White House with a laudatory post on X: “President Trump is a kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic, and hardworking man. I wish more Americans appreciated him. No one will ever make America great the way he has and continues to. It was an honor to work for him.”

An honor that can only be described as very brief.

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