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Katie Zacharia… lasted 14 minutes on the job. Technically it was five days, but in her less than one quarter hour on stage, it was pretty clear that she was overmatched. You could almost feel sorry for the 41 year old mother of four if it weren’t for the fact that she lost her job not for incompetence, but for deceit.
Poor Katie is hardly the first Trump appointee to lack any background, expertise, or skill relevant to the position. It simply doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to come up with a cart full of people in important positions who completely lacked experience and expertise concerning their high-level positions. Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr—all the wrong people for the wrong reasons in the wrong jobs.
Given that total lack of skill or knowledge isn’t a disqualifier in the Great One’s administration, it’s tougher when the double-whammy applies to you: you’re an incompetent who gets caught misrepresenting yourself as a lawyer. One hardly needs to be a lawyer to be the President’s mouthpiece. In his first term, Sarah Huckabee didn’t have any noteworthy credentials, although it’s hard to deny that she was smart and articulate. Most recently, Karoline Leavitt qualified for her position as an all-aboard MAGA member. She had lost her congressional run in New Hampshire, so was available, and she turned out to have the real qualifications needed to be Trump’s press secretary: totally loyal (credential #1) and willing to be combative (credential #2).
But Zacharia had been proudly selling herself for years as a savvy lawyer, which meant that not only had she graduated law school (which she had), but that she was licensed as a result of passing the bar (which she hadn’t).
And it was just an innocent question tossed her way. “Where did you pass the bar?” a curious reporter casually asked in Trump’s presence. Trump, who had no clue, simply turned around and asked her point blank. And the answer, something about “I was in China,” was the beginning of the end. After law school he did take the bar, she later explained, but she was too distracted doing important things to study and actually pass the bar—which meant, of course that she was not a licensed lawyer.
Pick your favorite metaphor: The sh_t hit the fan. The toothpaste was out of the tube. There was blood in the water. For poor Katie there was no going back. It was over in little more than an instant, and instead of defending her, the Trumpster quietly advised her that she might consider a different line of work.
Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted a grand total of 11 days in the same position under Trump the First must have watched this fiasco with a great deal of ambivalence. In a positive sense, this meant that he was no longer the most disappointing Trump appointee ever. On the other hand, he did hold a record for getting hired and fired that we all thought would last forever. For a while, he was Numero Uno, worthy of being in the Guinness Book of Records. Now the Mooch had become a mere footnote, a status he well deserves.
Someone will have to fill the press secretary job and there are many many (un)worthy candidates out there. I wish I would have thought of it first, but I have to give credit to satirist Andy Borowitz for proposing that George Santos would be a perfect fit.
And what is to become of our gal Katie? No brainer—there’s an opening as Ambassador to Greece.
