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White House press secretary Katie Zacharia had been sitting down for an interview with the newspaper The Wall Street Journal when she discovered she had been fired just five days into her role, reports say.
Donald Trump’s latest press secretary had made a disastrous debut on Tuesday, taking only three questions from friendly outlets, reading from a script and speaking for only 14 minutes.
The 42-year-old had also faced scrutiny over her legal background after the US president described her as an attorney – despite her confirming that she had never passed the bar exam.
The Journal wrote that they had been interviewing Ms Zacharia at her desk in the West Wing at 1pm on Friday, when she received a knock on the door from Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the president.
“JD wanted to chat with us real quick,” Mr Miller had said, referring the JD Vance, the vice president.
Minutes later, Mr Trump told reporters at his helipad that he had told Ms Zacharia: “I said, ‘Is this for you Katie? Because honestly, you don’t need this’”.
He added: “Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider.”
The Journal noted that Ms Zacharia, who had previously worked on the conservative radio programme The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, failed to return to the interview.
“I did everything in my power to effectuate a briefing in the limited time and information I had,” she later told The Journal on Friday night, hours after her firing, according to the outlet. “My goal was to serve President Trump and the American people to the best of my ability.”
In a post on social media, she said: “President Trump is a kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic, and hardworking man. I wish more Americans appreciated him.
“No one will ever make America great the way he has and continues to. It was an honor to work for him.”
Ms Zacharia had faced scrutiny over her first White House press conference, in which she had appeared visibly nervous and referred to her husband as the president.
During the briefing, she was asked by a reporter about where she passed the bar exam, and replied that she had done so while living in China.
However on Thursday, under pressure from the media, she admitted that she did not pass the bar exam but had practiced international transaction law in China with the “appropriate credentials”.
In an interview with conservative talking head Sean Hannity on Fox News, she faced particularly tough questioning, with the host asking: “Why didn’t you just say, ‘I never practiced the law?”
When she described how quickly she had taken on the role of press secretary, following Karoline Leavitt’s departure, he asked: “Am I hearing that you think the staff should have better prepped you?”
Her early exit is the quickest among the president’s White House press team, after Anthony Scaramucci left his post as communications director after only 10 days during Mr Trump’s first term.
Her departure also means that the crucial communications role is vacant just three weeks ahead of the midterm elections, with polls suggesting that Mr Trump could see a dramatic turn in favour amongst the American public over the cost of living crisis and the Iran war.
