Katie Zacharia exits White House press secretary role after five days

Katie Zacharia is leaving her job as White House press secretary after five days in the role, following questions about her legal credentials and a difficult first briefing. A White House official told The Guardian on Friday that she was “transitioning out,” while two U.S. officials told CBS News she was being removed.

The change came a week after President Donald Trump announced Zacharia as his choice to replace Karoline Leavitt, who stepped aside in August, according to CBS News. The New York Times first reported that Zacharia had been fired, citing three unnamed people familiar with the matter, The Guardian reported.

Hours before her departure became public, Trump told reporters outside the White House that he had urged Zacharia to reconsider the job because of the scrutiny she faced. “Katie has been treated very badly by the media. Very, very badly. Very unfair,” he said, according to The Guardian.

Asked whether he would keep her in the role, Trump said, “I’m going to let her make that decision.” He added that he had told Zacharia, “Honestly, if I were you, I would reconsider,” and said he would speak to her again when he returned.

Questions about Zacharia’s background centered on how she described her legal experience. She graduated from Pepperdine Law School in 2011 but did not pass the California bar exam, a fact she acknowledged Thursday, according to CBS News. The Guardian reported that Zacharia had previously said she practiced law before entering politics and that Trump had described her as an attorney.

Zacharia told The New York Times that Pepperdine University’s president had advised her she could call herself a “lawyer” but not an “attorney,” CBS News reported. She also told conservative commentator Jack Posobiec that she had never described herself as an “attorney at law.”

“I was very careful how I executed this. I never came across as someone who was an attorney at law,” she said, according to CBS News. She said there was a “lot of misinformation around the fact that I labeled myself a lawyer.”

On Thursday, Zacharia told The Guardian it was “unknown” how much she would interact with the media. She said only six days had passed between the call summoning her to Washington and her first appearance behind the press room podium.

CBS News reported that some White House staff learned of her departure from news coverage. One aide told the outlet that Zacharia had been unusually isolated during the week and had not functioned as a press secretary. “No one thought she was sticking around long enough to even involve her in actual decision-making,” the aide said.

Her five-day tenure would make her the shortest-serving White House press secretary, The Guardian reported. Anthony Scaramucci, who served 11 days as White House communications director during Trump’s first administration, wrote on X: “Records are made to be broken. But I take no pleasure in other people’s pain.”