Trump’s Slurs Come Back to Bite New Mouthpiece

Kevin Lamarque / REUTERS President Donald Trump’s habit of belittling rivals who failed the bar exam has come back to haunt him as his new mouthpiece fends off questions about her legal credentials.

Trump’s new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, whom the president introduced as “an attorney,” admitted Thursday that she failed California’s bar exam after graduating from law school in 2011.

Trump, 80, has repeatedly mocked his political rivals over their bar exam records, even calling then-Vice President Kamala Harris a “moron” in 2024, despite her having passed the exam on her second attempt in 1990.

Meanwhile, his administration has offered a more glowing assessment of Zacharia.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung described her as “uniquely qualified and whip smart” as questions mount over how the 41-year-old mother of four has presented her legal background.

Trump savaged Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign, suggesting that “maybe she wouldn’t pass the cognitive test,” referring to screening tests that the president has repeatedly claimed to have aced.

“She didn’t pass her bar exam.

She’s not a smart person.

She’s not a person that should represent our country,” he also told reporters in October 2024.

“She gives an answer that only a moron would give,” Trump told Tucker Carlson in an October 2024 interview.

“You can give bad answers, but this was an answer that a person who was not a smart person, a person who got the lowest score, perhaps in the history of the bar exams, [would give], okay? You know, she failed the bar exam, okay? But this is a person, this is a very low-IQ individual.” Hillary Clinton, who failed the D.C. bar exam in 1973, received the same treatment during Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016.

She “went to Washington D.C., she took her bar exam and she failed, right? Oh, she’s a genius.

No, no.

She failed on a bar exam,” Trump said at a rally.