Katie Zacharia out as White House Press Secretary after less than a week on the job
AP Photo/ Alex Brandon
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WXXV)–Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after just five days on the job, according to NBC News and White House sources.
The news follows Zacharia’s first press briefing and the revelation that she represented herself as a lawyer but did not pass her bar exam.
President Donald Trump said he would let Zacharia decide whether to remain as his press secretary after he suggested she was treated harshly by the media during her first week on the job.
“She’s been treated, I would say pretty nastily, and I said to Katie just two minutes ago, I said, Katie, you know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want,” Trump said.
Asked if he would keep her on the job, the president said, “I’m going to let her make that decision.”
Zacharia held a brief press briefing on Tuesday, just one day after she started the job, and came under scrutiny after she had represented herself as a lawyer but acknowledged this week that she did not pass her bar exam following law school.
Zacharia’s first White House press briefing lasted less than 15 minutes, during which she took only a few questions from reporters and couldn’t answer one about whether the U.S. had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine.
Zacharia had succeeded Karoline Leavitt, who left the White House position at the end of August after serving in the role since the beginning of Trump’s term in January 2025.
