Why the Katie Zacharia debacle is a huge embarrassment for Trump and his White House

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Katie Zacharia was on a media tour to save her job as White House press secretary on Friday when “Fox and Friends” host Lawrence Jones asked whether she wished she had disclosed never passing the bar exam, despite repeatedly claiming to be a lawyer .

Zacharia’s response: “Those questions weren’t asked.”

And therein lies the problem: It’s not a matter of qualifications — it’s a basic question about her background that President Donald Trump and his White House failed to vet.

Zacharia’s stunningly short and turbulent tenure as press secretary is far from the biggest or most substantial foul-up of Trump’s second term. But it does rank remarkably high on the embarrassment quotient.

In one fell swoop over the course of a week, the White House confirmed how rudderless, impulsive and hubristic its entire operation is — and with just a few weeks to go before voters render their judgment on it in the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump fired Zacharia as press secretary on Friday, advisers told CNN, just five days after she started the job. Her tenure has set the new benchmark for brevity as a top Trump White House aide, halving the record set by first-term Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci. (“A Scaramucci” has since become an informal unit measuring 11 days.)

Given that Trump personally selected Zacharia and he is generally loath to admit he’s made a mistake, it took a pretty rough week to prompt her ouster.

In her inaugural briefing on Tuesday, Zacharia spent most of a 14-minute appearance nervously reading from a script that she repeatedly stumbled over before calling on just three reporters from conservative-friendly outlets.

Then she went on a stream of media appearances that only reinforced she would likely be a liability at the White House lectern. Trump subsequently pulled the plug without even giving her a second briefing.

It’s embarrassing for a number of reasons.

It’s not as if Zacharia was the product of a process that needed to be rushed; former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced her departure more than two months ago, on August 12 . That’s plenty of time to make sure you have the right person.

The White House did have a series of candidates, CNN has reported , but some of them suffered from the unforgivable deficit of having occasionally said negative things about Trump. Zacharia’s name emerged suddenly late in the process, after not being previously considered. And as with so many things, it appears those around Trump quickly turned his whim into reality.

There are understandable reasons for why Trump might have thought she could do the job, of course. He had undoubtedly seen her defending him on cable news plenty of times, his preferred method for screening job candidates. But serving as press secretary isn’t the same as doing TV hits with often-friendly hosts. And her briefing performance was objectively brutal.

Then the White House compounded its mess.

It dispatched Zacharia on a media tour of friendly outlets, apparently in hopes of rallying support and showing she was up to the task. But it proved the opposite.

She was peppered with tough questions from conservative Trump allies who were ostensibly worried about her ability to handle being the face of the White House’s messaging. And those appearances — more than the briefing — made Trump conclude that she “wasn’t ready for prime time,” a person with direct knowledge of his comments told CNN.

One of those skeptical conservative Trump allies was Fox News’ Sean Hannity. On Tuesday night, he was reading from the typical playbook: bashing the “abusively biased, corrupt news media” for being mean to Zacharia. But during his interview with her Thursday night, he asked her a series of sober and probing questions.

Trump on Friday bemoaned how Zacharia was “made to suffer like she’s suffered at the hands of the press.” But it’s a lot harder to make that argument when your own media allies have done the scrutinizing. (Some of them also dinged Zacharia for her resume inflation .)

And similar to Hannity, the White House now has egg on its face after initially vouching for Zacharia.

White House communications director Steven Cheung assured in an excitable social media post Tuesday morning that Zacharia had a “tremendous start” in which she “commanded the room.” A White House press release hailed her “commanding” performance and clipped what it cast as her highlights. Later in the week, Cheung insisted she would be remembered as “one of the all-time greats” by the end of Trump’s second term.

But perhaps the worst part of this whole episode for the White House is that it further solidifies a pre-existing narrative of Trump’s chaotic leadership style and inability to effectively manage the federal government.

There’s been plenty of grist for that mill, including Trump’s recently aborted decisions to run taxpayer-funded political ads and to live stream an execution — both of which 80%-plus Americans opposed .

Earlier in his presidency, Trump rained chaos on the government by giving Elon Musk apparent carte blanche to do, seemingly, more or less whatever he wanted. Many people who were fired later had to be reinstated when it was discovered that, actually, they did really important jobs — or couldn’t legally be fired.

There was Signalgate and the whiplash over Trump’s tariffs and the administration’s inability to get its story straight on the Iran war .

Similar to Zacharia, Trump also removed officials shortly after the Senate confirmed them, including the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his IRS commissioner. (In the latter case, he also removed the acting replacement after less than a week .) His first national security adviser was moved to another job after less than three months, thanks to Signalgate.

And the American people appear to have noticed. A CNN poll in July showed they disapproved of Trump’s management of the federal government, 65%-35%.

Fully 74% of independents and even 28% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents disapproved.

“A Zacharia” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “a Scaramucci” does. But her tenure is an unforced error that gives voters a similar shorthand at a remarkably inopportune time for Trump.

朱莉娅·德马雷·尼金森/美联社

周五，凯蒂·扎卡里亚 (Katie Zacharia) 为了保住白宫新闻秘书的职位而进行媒体巡回宣传。当时，《福克斯与朋友们》节目主持人劳伦斯·琼斯 (Lawrence Jones) 问她，是否后悔当初没有披露自己从未通过律师资格考试的事实，尽管她一再声称自己是律师。

扎卡里亚的回应是：“根本没人问过这些问题。”

问题就在这里：这不是资历的问题，而是关于她背景的基本问题，而唐纳德·特朗普总统和他的白宫却没有对此进行审查。

扎卡里亚担任新闻秘书期间，其任期之短令人震惊，也之动荡，远非特朗普第二任期内最大或最严重的失误。但就尴尬程度而言，它确实名列前茅。

短短一周之内，白宫就彻底暴露了其整个运作是多么缺乏方向、冲动和傲慢——而距离选民在 2026 年中期选举中对其做出评判仅剩几周时间。

据CNN报道，特朗普周五解雇了新闻秘书扎卡里亚，顾问们透露，扎卡里亚上任仅五天。她的任期创下了特朗普白宫高级幕僚任期最短的新纪录，比特朗普第一任通讯主任安东尼·斯卡拉穆奇创下的纪录缩短了一半。（“斯卡拉穆奇”一词后来成为一种非正式的计量单位，指11天。）

鉴于特朗普亲自挑选了扎卡里亚，而且他通常不愿承认自己犯了错误，所以需要经历相当糟糕的一周才能促使她被解雇。

在周二的就职简报会上，扎卡里亚在 14 分钟的出场时间里，大部分时间都在紧张地照着稿子念，而且多次磕磕绊绊，最后只点名让三位来自保守派友好媒体的记者提问。

随后，她频繁出现在媒体上，但这反而更加印证了她很可能成为白宫讲台上的累赘。特朗普随后甚至没有给她第二次简报，就终止了与她的合作。

这令人尴尬的原因有很多。

扎卡里亚的任命并非仓促之举；前白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特早在两个多月前的8月12日就宣布离职。这有足够的时间来确保找到合适的人选。

据CNN报道，白宫确实列出了一系列候选人，但其中一些人存在一个不可饶恕的缺陷：他们曾发表过一些对特朗普不利的言论。扎卡里亚的名字在遴选过程后期突然出现，此前他从未被考虑过。而就像很多事情一样，特朗普身边的人似乎很快就将他的突发奇想变成了现实。

当然，特朗普认为她能胜任这份工作是有道理的。他无疑在有线电视新闻上多次看到她为他辩护，而这正是他筛选求职者的首选方式。但担任新闻秘书与在电视上与那些通常对他友好的主持人打交道截然不同。而且，她的新闻发布会表现客观来说非常糟糕。

然后，白宫让事情变得更加糟糕。

它派扎卡里亚走访友好媒体，显然是希望争取支持，并证明她能够胜任这项工作。但结果却适得其反。

她遭到了特朗普保守派盟友的连番质问，这些人显然担心她能否胜任白宫形象代言人的角色。一位直接了解特朗普言论的人士告诉CNN，正是这些露面——而非简报会本身——让特朗普得出结论：她“还没准备好成为公众人物”。

持怀疑态度的保守派特朗普盟友中，就包括福克斯新闻的肖恩·汉尼提。周二晚上，他照例抨击“带有偏见、腐败的新闻媒体”对扎卡里亚的刻薄报道。但在周四晚上的采访中，他却向扎卡里亚提出了一系列冷静而深入的问题。

特朗普周五抱怨扎卡里亚“像她遭受媒体迫害那样遭受折磨”。但如果连自己的媒体盟友都对她进行了审查，这种说法就很难站得住脚了。（他们中的一些人还批评扎卡里亚的简历夸大其词。）

与汉尼提的情况类似，白宫最初力挺扎卡里亚，现在却颜面尽失。

白宫通讯主任史蒂文·张周二上午在社交媒体上激动地发文称，扎卡里亚的开场“非常精彩”，她“掌控了全场”。白宫新闻稿也称赞她“极具感染力”的表现，并剪辑了她演讲的精彩片段。本周晚些时候，张坚称，到特朗普第二个任期结束时，她将被铭记为“史上最伟大的演讲者之一”。

但对白宫而言，整件事最糟糕的地方或许在于，它进一步巩固了此前已有的关于特朗普混乱的领导风格和无力有效管理联邦政府的说法。

有很多事情可以拿来炒作，包括特朗普最近放弃的用纳税人资金投放政治广告和直播死刑执行的决定——这两项决定都遭到了超过 80% 美国人的反对。

特朗普总统任期初期，他给予埃隆·马斯克近乎全权委托，任其为所欲为，这给政府带来了混乱。许多被解雇的人后来不得不复职，因为人们发现他们实际上承担着非常重要的工作——或者说，他们根本不可能被合法解雇。

发生了“信号门”事件，以及特朗普关税政策引发的剧烈波动，还有政府在伊朗战争问题上前后矛盾的说法。

与扎卡里亚类似，特朗普也在参议院确认任命后不久便撤换了官员，包括疾病控制与预防中心主任和国税局局长。（在国税局局长一事上，不到一周后，他也撤换了代理局长。）他的首任国家安全顾问在上任不到三个月后，就因“信号门”事件被调任其他职位。

美国民众似乎也注意到了这一点。CNN七月份的一项民调显示，65%的美国民众对特朗普管理联邦政府的方式表示不满，只有35%的人表示支持。

高达 74% 的独立人士，甚至 28% 的共和党人和倾向共和党的独立人士也表示不赞成。

“扎卡里亚”听起来不如“斯卡拉穆奇”那么响亮。但她的任期却是一个不必要的失误，在对特朗普而言极其不合时宜的时机，让选民们对她有了类似的印象。