Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after five days. President Trump fired her Friday, advisers told CNN, after a week of questions about whether she was ever a lawyer, as Trump had called her. A White House official said she was “transitioning out” and would leave in the next few days.
Trump put it more gently. “Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider,” he said he told her Friday morning. “Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.” He added: “Maybe it’s not for her.” Her tenure was shorter than Anthony Scaramucci’s 11 days as communications director in 2017, the old benchmark for a short White House stint.
Why was Katie Zacharia fired?
Two things, according to people around Trump: a shaky first briefing Tuesday, where she looked nervous and took only three questions, and the lawyer question. Trump introduced her as “an attorney.” When a reporter asked where she passed the bar, she answered, “when I moved to China,” Time reported. She later said she misheard the question.
On Thursday night she told Sean Hannity she’d taken the California bar once and failed. “You went to Pepperdine law school but you did not pass the bar exam, correct?” Hannity asked. “Correct,” she said. Asked why she hadn’t told the White House, she said “those questions weren’t asked” and “I’m being hired as White House press secretary, not White House counsel.” Two sources told CNN that the Hannity interview, more than the briefing, convinced Trump she had to go.
What did Katie Zacharia say about working in China?
She told Hannity that after failing the bar she moved to China to join her husband, and “did get a job in an international practice of a Chinese law firm. I was doing multi-cross-country border transactions and multimillion-dollar shareholder agreements,” Newsweek reported. Her LinkedIn lists the firm as Zhong Lun, one of China’s largest private law firms, where she worked from 2011 to 2013.
To be precise: that’s a private Chinese law firm, not the Chinese government. But it doesn’t make her a lawyer either. Foreigners can’t practice law in China, and a law professor who studies Chinese legal regulation told Snopes there’s “no possibility” she ever passed China’s bar exam, though the cross-border business work she described doesn’t require a law license. China’s government, for its part, invited her to visit more often after she said the country lacked “proper toilets.”
Who will be the next White House press secretary?
Trump said there’s no rush to name a replacement, according to Fox News, as cited by Al Jazeera. Zacharia succeeded Karoline Leavitt. People close to Trump say he still likes her personally. She and her family were set to have dinner with Vice President JD Vance’s family Friday night, and sources said she could get another role in the administration.
The BeezLoop Take
This one didn’t come down to the press. Zacharia called herself a lawyer, the president repeated it, and when asked where she’d passed the bar she said “when I moved to China,” which she later blamed on mishearing the question. The White House then spent days arguing over the dictionary instead of correcting the record. Trump blaming the media for how she was treated skips the part where nobody checked her résumé before putting her at the podium.
It’s the second high-profile exit in a week, after Kimberly Guilfoyle. Both were picked for loyalty and TV presence, and both fell over basic vetting questions. Three weeks before the midterms, the people running the White House look like they’re hiring on instinct.
The open question: if Zacharia gets another job in the administration, will anyone vet that one first?
Also on BeezLoop: the White House pushed out Kimberly Guilfoyle at Zacharia’s first briefing, and a judge blocked the White House ban on three newsrooms.
Sources: CNN · Time · Al Jazeera / Reuters · Newsweek · Snopes · NBC News · Associated Press (video)
