President Donald Trump’s close personal assistant played a key role in his disastrous appointment of Katie Zacharia, according to new reports.
Zacharia’s hiring as press secretary, a position she held for less than five days, was “furthered along with the strong input” of Trump’s fellow blonde aide, Natalie Harp, 35, sources told Axios.
Zacharia, 41, flew from California to Washington, D.C., to meet Trump, 80, on Oct. 8. After meeting with the president, she was reportedly offered the role of press secretary “on the spot” the following day—exactly a week before she was spectacularly fired.
Trump announced Zacharia was done at the White House on Friday, telling reporters he was urging her to reconsider the role. The Wall Street Journal has since revealed that Zacharia learned she was being axed while she was in the middle of an interview with the newspaper in her new office.
“I said, ‘Katie, is this for you?’ Because, you know, she’s been treated very rough, and she’s a nice person, a very nice person,” Trump said Friday. “I’ve watched her for years on television, but I said, ‘Is this for you, Katie? Because honestly, you don’t need this.’”
The mother of four held her first press briefing on Tuesday, took only three questions, all from conservative outlets, and relied heavily on a script before fleeing the podium after less than 15 minutes.
At one point, Zacharia also appeared to confuse the president with her husband.
Reporters also questioned Zacharia, who graduated from Pepperdine University’s Caruso Law School in 2011, about her legal credentials after reports emerged that she wasn’t licensed to practice law in any U.S. state.
She refused to say where she passed the bar exam. The Wall Street Journal later reported that Zacharia sat the bar exam after graduating law school, but didn’t pass.
Axios reports that Trump was “blindsided” by the news that Zacharia was not an “attorney,” as he had called her on Truth Social when announcing her hire.
Zacharia tried to do damage control in a Thursday-night interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
Hannity asked her how she believed her debut briefing went, noting that her performance had been “widely panned.” He also pressed her on her failure to set the record straight about not passing the bar exam in California and her decision to take questions only from conservative outlets at her first White House briefing—points she struggled to defend.
On Friday, Trump said he had watched the show and “Sean was a little bit tough.” However, this was reportedly the final straw that pushed Trump to end her time as press secretary.
