Word was spreading that President Trump’s new Press Secretary wasn’t doing so well right around the time I was teeing up my column last week. As I post this next one, she’s already gone.
I’m honestly surprised Katie Zacharia didn’t last a week.
There used to be two kinds of people in Washington politics: People who moved to DC right after graduation and worked their way up. Then there were people who worked their way up in state politics, and moved to DC to serve a principal.
I was one of the latter; President Obama actually had a lot of the latter on his team. So does President Trump. (His White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, is one of them, coming up through Florida politics).
Zacharia stands out, and maybe flamed out, because she was neither.
A One Week News Cycle
When she was first announced, a lot of the hot takes I saw were that CNN Republican pundit Scott Jennings must be sad. That didn’t really make sense to me. I don’t think he wants the job. He is a full-time political influencer, and he makes a lot of money using his position at CNN.
It’s a perch that lets him drop a new take to match the Republican position (which often differs from his previous take) and bring in contracts to his business, which leverages his power and platform to influence Washington lawmakers. The never ending gross cycle continues. It gets him more power and money. Why would he want to upend that to move to take a truly thankless job? (It didn’t go well for Dan Bongino.)
What was interesting about Zacharia’s appointment is that it was a fresh face. What is sad about it was that she didn’t have the credentials she presented.
I watched the press conference, trying to keep an open mind, and I was unimpressed. She mentioned at the top where the President would travel, then included where she would accompany him. Lots of staff travel. That’s not news. Worse, it suggested a type of starry-eyed self importance in the role.
As part of this, she did the more typical thing that President Trump’s press secretaries have done, roll off a list of accomplishments, half of which are true. She seemed inexperienced and insincere, perhaps because she was so obviously reading.
And then she took a few questions.
One question I hated: How was she going to deal with her husband and four children? That type of question that would never be asked of a man, specifically not a man like Scott Jennings (whose wife and four kids are in Kentucky).
She mentioned she had stayed home with her children, and I believe every parent should have the right to do that, and re-enter the traditional workforce at all levels when ready. But I wondered why this made its way into the briefing.
It seemed she was hired, like a lot of President Trump’s team, to serve as a sort of influencer spokesperson. To command a room, and serve only one: him.
She showed no ability to do so, almost from minute one, in her White House briefing. Her response to this question didn’t serve the White House (she accidentally called her husband her President), and honestly it didn’t particularly serve moms very well.
That probably didn’t end her tenure though. The question that came later most likely did.
She was with the President when he was boarding Marine One. It was a question about where she passed the bar. She said she didn’t hear the question over the whir of Marine One but she answered “China.”
China? That presented more questions than answers.
The End
For President Trump to turn on someone over credentials, it doesn’t happen a lot. An overriding sensation of this Presidency and the people around it is shamelessness when it comes to stuff like this. Many of the people who surround the President have thin resumes, but they have ferocious loyalty to him, and they show an ability to influence conversation.
Zacharia certainly had loyalty, by all accounts, but her swift departure shows the limits of building your political credentials on social media.
I’m still wondering what Ric Grenell’s “Fix California,” the outfit where Zacharia supposedly worked, has actually accomplished. According to her, Zacharia was the General Counsel of “Fix California.” I guess they were trying to put a school choice ballot initiative on the California ballot (not there), and to register more conservative voters in the state of California. (We’ll see how that worked out this next election.) It’s a thin organization with some questions.
How that led to Trump Media and then so swiftly to the White House with the appointment that announced she was a lawyer isn’t really clear. It’s not conventional credentials, but in the end, President Trump tends to keep them around until he’s done with them. Evidently he was done with Zacharia at the White House level pretty quickly.
What it says
I saw an article that defended her by Joel Pollak at The California Post. He said she wrote a popular piece for the news organization about how she fought to wear her MAGA hat at a California gym (is that really a credential now?).
The one part of Pollak’s article I’ll agree with: He mentions others who use titles he believed they didn’t earn. Sadly creating resumes out of thin air is a long art in Washington. George Santos very recently came to Washington, only to be found out for lying about his work history, his education. Heck even Joe Biden claimed he graduated top of his law class when he was closer to the bottom.
But Pollak included one line that I really hated. She “looked the part.”
Is that all it takes? I would think we would want more out of Washington than looking the part. I guess it’s good then that this was a very short show.