Special Report: Katie Zacharia out as White House press secretary after 5 days on job
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Oct. 16, 2026, 2:07 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 16, 2026, 2:56 PM EDT
Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after just five days on the job, a senior administration official, an administration official and a
A senior administration official said that Zacharia is transitioning into a new role that would be announced at a later date.
The news follows Zacharia’s widely panned first press briefing and the revelation that she represented herself as a lawyer but did not pass her bar exam.
Zacharia leaves the position as she entered it: quickly. President Donald Trump’s quick elevation of her from conservative media commentator to the high-profile White House job was a surprise. The president announced her appointment on Friday and she gave her first briefing on Tuesday morning, right after a three-day holiday weekend.
Her sudden exit will leave a key White House communications role vacant less than three weeks before the midterm elections as Trump has complained publicly that his administration and party are suffering because of bad public relations.
“Our country has never done better,” he told supporters at a rally in Durant, Oklahoma, this month. “We cannot get the word across because of the fake news and because … we’re doing a great job in running the country, but we’re not doing a good job of public relations.”
Earlier Friday, 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.”
Trump also said that if he were in her shoes, he’d “reconsider” and said he would be having a conversation with her later about her situation.
Zacharia is scheduled to have dinner Friday with Vice President JD Vance and his family at his residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., two
Zacharia held her first 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 shedid 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.
During the briefing, Zacharia announced that Trump had asked Kimberly Guilfoyleto resign as U.S. ambassador to Greece, sharing that information after a journalist asked whether the president was planning to fire Guilfoyle over misconduct allegations, which she has denied. Guilfoyle announced she was stepping down within hours.
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.
Before her extraordinarily brief stint at the White House, Zacharia made a name for herself as a conservative commentator. She previously served as a senior communications adviser for Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Trump’s Truth Social website.
Zacharia’s time at the White House was even shorter than Anthony Scaramucci’s as White House communications director during Trump’s first term. Scaramucci served in the role for only 11 days, and his name became a descriptor for public officials whose terms were exceedingly brief.
Scaramucci posted Friday on X, “Records are made to be broken. But I take no please in other people’s pain.”
Earlier this week, the nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the State Bar of California requesting an investigation into whether Zacharia broke the law by calling herself a lawyer even though she is unlicensed.
Zacharia was asked Monday about what bar exam she had taken as she and the president stopped on the South Lawn to speak with reporters before boarding. Her answer was difficult to hear over the whir of Marine One’s helicopter blades, but part of Zacharia’s response included “when I moved to China.”
A senior administration official confirmed Thursday that Zacharia didn’t pass the California bar exam, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Zacharia told right-wing activist Jack Posobiec in an interview Thursday that she had not passed the bar exam.
There is no evidence that she is licensed to practice law in any state, according to a review by NBC News. Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine Law and has said she practiced law in China. Legal experts told NBC News that only Chinese citizens can sit for the Chinese bar exam. Zacharia could have consulted on cross-border legal issues, one expert told NBC News.
