Katie Zacharia’s five days as press secretary expose flaws in Trump’s TV-driven hiring

The president reportedly chose Zacharia after seeing her on television, but her first press briefing and disastrous interviews sealed her fate

And so Katie Zacharia joins the mayfly ranks of Liz Truss, Anthony Scaramucci , New Coke, CNN+ and Quibi. To say she burned twice as bright and half as long would be too kind. She went out like a firework on a soggy night.

The White House confirmed on Friday that Zacharia is leaving her role as press secretary after just five days on the job. No one was surprised after a lacklustre press briefing debut and scrutiny over her legal credentials.

But even more importantly, Zacharia lived by the sword and died in the one arena that Donald Trump truly cares about: television.

She reportedly got the job by closely monitoring the US president’s public schedule and tracked his active hours on Truth Social to predict exactly when he would be watching TV. She then timed her own appearances on air to make sure she caught his eye. The fact that she fitted the glossy blond aesthetic from what Trump calls “central casting” also helped.

But TV also proved her undoing. On Thursday, Zacharia gave a series of interviews to Trump-friendly outlets in a desperate bid for redemption. Instead, she sealed her own fate with more hapless performances.

She must have expected Fox News host Sean Hannity , who has even spoken at Trump rallies, to give her an easy ride. But even he was sceptical when she admitted she had “stepped up to the plate with very little prep time” for the first briefing. Hannity asked: “Am I hearing that you think the staff should have prepped you better?”

Zacharia rejected the notion that she had only taken questions from conservative outlets, incorrectly asserting that the Daily Mail is “not known to be a conservative outlet”. Hannity also quizzed her about her dubious legal credentials. “Why not just say, ‘I went to Pepperdine law school, and then took a different career path, and I took the bar once and didn’t pass?’”

Zacharia tried again on Fox & Friends but ran into host Lawrence Jones, who said: “You know, Katie, it’s been a tough week for you. It’s not an easy job to be the press secretary and you never want to be the story.”

He also asked: “Do you think you still have the confidence of the president?” Zacharia responded, “I’m standing here,” referring to the fact that she was speaking from the White House north lawn.

Her exit hours later was met with widespread ridicule – and a measure of human compassion for someone whom Trump had subjected to a very public humiliation.

Scaramucci, who lasted only 11 days as White House communications director during Trump’s first term, tweeted : “Records are made to be broken. But I take no pleasure in other people’s pain.”

Joe Lockhart , a former White House press secretary under Bill Clinton, said in a phone interview: “It’s hard to generate sympathy for this woman, but there was no way for her to succeed. It takes years to be ready to do that job. Not days, not hours. I spent 20 years preparing for my first briefing from the very first campaign I did.