For a bit more than 14 minutes last Tuesday, Katie Zacharia could have spoken for the United States. Instead, she swung from ebullience about her new job to awkward praise for the president. She took only seven questions from three friendly outlets. Within days, she was out.
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Inside the Beltway, her five-day tenure and unceremonious ouster recalled Anthony Scaramucci’s 11-day stretch as President Donald Trump’s communications director in his first term. Zacharia was deemed to have survived only 0.45 Scaramuccis.
But this is not – or not just – a laughing matter. I covered the White House for about 16 years. I’ve interacted with at least 10 press secretaries of both parties. Here are a few things to think about from this episode – and why you should care.
This Was a Vetting Problem
The proximate cause of Zacharia’s removal was her inability to explain, much less defend, why she repeatedly identified herself as a working lawyer despite never passing the bar exam.
On the surface, this was a communications and credibility problem.
Communications, because this was a relatively small sin that would have been competently expunged by most of the White Houses I covered. Picture a visibly regretful Zacharia telling a sympathetic TV host that she was sorry if, as a private citizen, she left people with the wrong idea, and promising nothing less than full honesty in her role serving the public. Trot out a Republican Party elder or a bipartisan-curious Democrat to say she’d learned her lesson.
Credibility, because a White House press secretary might one day be called upon to tell you about American troops involved in war, an attack on U.S. soil or a presidential health scare. They need to have at least earned the benefit of the doubt that they are telling the truth (even though reporters should always test their words against known facts).
But what struck me most about the whole debacle was the lack of vetting.
I spoke to several veterans of White House communications, from both parties, and all were struck that the kerfuffle over her legal credentials appeared to catch the administration by surprise. Certainly, Trump aides did not have a solid response prepared. There was no parade of surrogates ready to take to the airwaves to try to spin the problem away.
Asked by Fox News host Lawrence Jones whether she wished she had told the White House she had never passed the bar, Zacharia replied, “Those questions weren’t asked.”
Zacharia, 41, isn’t a child. None of this is meant to absolve her. But a different White House might have spotted the potential problem and drawn up a strategy for dealing with it.
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OK, It Was Communications Too
Zacharia spent most of her 14-minute briefing praising Trump and declaring herself over the moon to finally have a job she had sought for a long time. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
But it made for awkward viewing, especially when, answering a question about work-life balance, she mentioned “my president – excuse me, my husband.”
The ‘Friendly’ Problem
In the five or so minutes that Zacharia took questions, she only called on Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail – all outlets that have historically been friendly to Trump.
But she still wasn’t ready for the questions. When Fox asked about reports that the U.S. was throttling intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, which had received a lot of attention, she could not answer. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” she said.
Calling on only those outlets also robbed her of the ability to give Trump something he relishes: a fight with the mainstream media. That might not have been enough to save her job. But it could not have hurt.
The Limits of White House Power
Trump has a famously tight grip on what his supporters believe. But no amount of White House spin could save Zacharia’s job – not that presidential aides did not try.
“Commanding,” the White House said in a news release detailing her first – and only – press briefing. “Powerful … strong … clear purpose.”
Communications Director Steven Cheung said, “At the end of this second term, she’ll be remembered as one of the all-time greats.”
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Now she’ll be remembered for the all-time shortest tenure.
