White House Fires Press Secretary After Five Days

Katie Zacharia lost her White House press secretary job on Friday, just five days after she started, advisers told CNN. Earlier that day, she told reporters, “There are no staffing changes that are happening.” The reversal came ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, when voters were due to judge the administration.

A rapid reversal

Zacharia held her first briefing on Tuesday. In the 14-minute appearance, she spent much of the time reading from a script and repeatedly stumbling over it. She called on three reporters from conservative-friendly outlets. CNN reported that her later media appearances strengthened White House concerns that she’d become a liability at the lectern.

President Donald Trump ended Zacharia’s tenure without giving her a second briefing. A person with direct knowledge of Trump’s comments told CNN that her media appearances led him to conclude she “wasn’t ready for prime time.” CNN reported that Trump had personally selected her and was generally reluctant to admit mistakes.

On “Fox and Friends,” host Lawrence Jones asked Zacharia whether she wished she’d disclosed that she had never passed the bar exam, despite repeatedly claiming to be a lawyer. “Those questions weren’t asked,” she replied. CNN reported that the White House hadn’t vetted her background.

The White House sent Zacharia on a media tour of friendly outlets, apparently hoping to rally support and show she could do the job. Some conservative Trump allies, though, questioned her ability to serve as the face of White House messaging. Fox News host Sean Hannity criticized what he called the “abusively biased, corrupt news media” for its treatment of Zacharia on Tuesday night. On Thursday night, he asked her probing questions in an interview. Some Trump media allies also criticized what CNN described as resume inflation.

Praise, scrutiny and selection

White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote on social media Tuesday morning that Zacharia had made a “tremendous start” and “commanded the room.” A White House press release praised her “commanding” performance and highlighted excerpts from the briefing. Later in the week, Cheung said she’d be remembered as “one of the all-time greats” by the end of Trump’s second term. On Friday, Trump said Zacharia was “made to suffer like she’s suffered at the hands of the press.”

Her appointment followed former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s announcement that she would leave, made on August 12. CNN reported that the White House considered several candidates, some of whom had occasionally criticized Trump, before Zacharia’s name surfaced late in the process. Trump had seen her defend him on cable news, which CNN described as his preferred way of screening job candidates.

Turnover ahead of the midterms

CNN said Zacharia’s five-day stint set a new brevity benchmark for a top Trump White House aide, cutting in half the record set by first-term Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci. “A Scaramucci” has become an informal unit measuring 11 days.

CNN grouped the staffing change with other episodes it cited as evidence of a chaotic administration. They included Trump’s aborted decisions to run taxpayer-funded political ads and livestream an execution, which the article said more than 80% of Americans opposed; Elon Musk’s apparent freedom to make government changes, followed by the reinstatement of some fired employees because they performed important jobs or couldn’t legally be fired; Signalgate; shifts in Trump’s tariffs; and trouble maintaining a consistent account of the Iran war.

CNN also reported that Trump removed officials shortly after Senate confirmation, including the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his IRS commissioner. He removed the acting IRS replacement in less than a week. His first national security adviser moved to another job after less than three months because of Signalgate. A CNN poll in July found that 65% disapproved and 35% approved of Trump’s management of the federal government. Disapproval reached 74% among independents and 28% among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.