Katie Zacharia will no longer serve as the White House press secretary for President Donald Trump after spending less than a week in the role, plunging the White House’s communications operation back into a state of turmoil.
Zacharia left the post on Friday, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the decision before its public announcement.
A White House official said Zacharia is leaving the post. It is not clear whether she will take another role within the White House or in Trump’s political circle.
Trump told reporters on Friday that he encouraged her to “reconsider” her tenure in the post, although he declined to say whether he would fire her.
“I told her: ‘honestly, if I were you, I would reconsider,'” the president told journalists at the White House.
The New York Times and the Fox News had previously reported on the decision.
Zacharia’s tenure in the role had been turbulent from the start. Her first and only press conference was widely criticized, as she spoke slowly and hesitantly, reading prepared statements, and answered questions from only three reporters.
She also faced a series of questions about presenting herself as a lawyer, despite not having passed the bar exam. Trump himself had called her a “lawyer” in the post announcing her hiring on social media.
The rapid rise and fall of Zacharia was notable even by Trump White House standards. The episode echoed the early days of the Republican’s first term, marked by constant turnover and turmoil within the White House staff. At the time, White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was fired after only 11 days on the job.
“Records are made to be broken. But I take no pleasure in the suffering of others,” Scaramucci posted on X this Friday.
Zacharia’s attempts to defend herself also did not go well. She faced tough questions about her legal training in two interviews with Fox News, a network generally friendly to the administration. In another conversation with a conservative commentator, Zacharia made a dismissive remark by stating that China did not have “adequate bathrooms.”
The president attributed Zacharia’s difficulties to what he described as unfair treatment by the press, but still suggested that the post might not be right for her.
“I told her it would be better to be happy, and I am not sure anyone can be happy in that job,” he said. “I told her: ‘Katie, do you need this? I think not.'”
When asked whether he would remove her from the post by force, Trump replied that he is “considering doing something,” but that he would “let her make that decision.”
Still, there were signs that the White House planned to keep Zacharia close. She and her family had a dinner scheduled for Friday with Vice President JD Vance and his family at the Naval Observatory in Washington, according to people familiar with the matter.
The turbulence comes a little more than two weeks ahead of the November midterm elections, in which Republicans face difficulties persuading skeptical voters to continue backing the party amid concerns about the cost of living.
With Zacharia’s exit, Trump is again left without a White House press secretary, a role traditionally responsible for amplifying the president’s messages in the media.
Zacharia succeeded Karoline Leavitt, a longtime Trump aide who left the post as press secretary in August. It remains unclear who will assume the role or when a nomination will be announced.
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