Katie Zacharia’s Attempts At Damage Control Aren’t Going Especially Well

For White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, the past week has clearly been something of a whirlwind. It was, after all, just seven days ago when Donald Trump announced that the former conservative commentator would serve as his new chief spokesperson. Quite a bit has happened since.

Monday, Oct. 12: As Zacharia begins her tenure in the West Wing, multiple news organizations report on her extensive record of peddling unhinged conspiratorial nonsense via social media.

Tuesday, Oct. 13: Zacharia holds her first press briefing (with an emphasis on “brief”) and leaves little doubt that she is wholly unprepared for the job. One White House official tells MS NOW, “She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record,” referring to Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s communications director for 11 days in 2017.

Tuesday, Oct. 13: After her embarrassing train wreck, Zacharia, who has repeatedly identified herself as an attorney, is asked in which state she had passed the bar exam. The press secretary responds that she had “moved to China,” which didn’t make a lot of sense.

Wednesday, Oct. 14: The Campaign for Accountability files a bar complaint in California against the press secretary (Zacharia’s home is in the Golden State), alleging that she misrepresented her legal credentials.

Wednesday, Oct. 14: When Wired magazine asks Zacharia about her work with Beachbody, a fitness company that ran a multilevel marketing operation, she describes the business as “sort of a pyramid scheme.”

Wednesday, Oct. 14: A partner at the law firm Zacharia worked at in China tells The New York Times that it often hired foreigners for language assistance and to help Chinese staff understand foreign business culture. Though Zacharia claimed in the past to have worked on “international transaction law” at the firm, the partner tells the Times her role at the firm would have likely been similar to a paid internship.

Thursday, Oct. 15: Zacharia sits down with a radical conspiracy theorist for an interview on a conservative media outlet called Real America’s Voice. She concedes that she tried and failed to pass the California bar exam. This would be less of a problem were it not for Trump repeatedly mocking those who have failed bar exams as evidence of being unintelligent.

In the same interview, she blames her embarrassing briefing from earlier in the week on the fact that the briefing was in the morning, the day after a holiday.

Thursday, Oct. 15: Zacharia wraps up the day with an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, in which she continues to struggle.

Friday, Oct. 16: Zacharia returns to Fox News, where she’s asked if there’s anything she’d like to clean up from her troubled interview the night before.

I think it’s fair to say her first week could have gone better.

As speculation swirls about Zacharia’s future, there are a couple of questions hanging overhead for the White House team she recently joined.

First, did anyone on the president’s team make any effort to vet her before she was hired? Or was this a situation in which Trump simply saw someone make comments he liked during some cable news interviews?

Second, who thought it would be a good idea for the president to choose a new press secretary, three weeks before nationwide elections, have her move across the country, and throw her into a difficult role without any meaningful preparation?

Clearly, Zacharia is failing as the new press secretary, but there’s a fair amount of blame to go around for this fiasco.

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