Katie Zacharia Is Out After Five Days as White House Press Secretary

Katie Zacharia walked into the White House briefing room on Tuesday and was out of the job by Friday afternoon - five calendar days on the clock and one press briefing to her name. She leaves a role the president has treated as his own since his first term.

Katie Zacharia Is Out After Five Days as White House Press Secretary

Washington, D.C. - October 16, 2026 - A rookie press secretary is out of the job after five calendar days, and the president's chief public voice is now vacant 18 days before the midterm elections. The White House says she is not leaving the administration, only the podium.

The Five-Day Press Secretary

NBC News reported at 2:07 p.m. EDT on Friday that Zacharia is out after five days, citing a senior administration official, an administration official and a source familiar with the decision. The same senior administration official said she is transitioning into a new role that would be announced at a later date. Trump announced her appointment on Friday 9 October, she started on Monday 12 October, she held a single briefing on Tuesday 13 October, the complaint against her was filed on Wednesday 14 October, she said she had not passed the bar exam on Thursday 15 October, and she was out on Friday 16 October. She succeeded Karoline Leavitt, who resigned in August after a 17-month tenure. Zacharia arrived from conservative media rather than from a government communications shop: until last week she was a commentator for Fox News and Newsmax, and a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social, since June.

Trump Told Her to Reconsider

Earlier on Friday, Trump said he would let Zacharia decide whether to remain as his press secretary after suggesting she had been treated harshly during her first week. "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," he told reporters, according to NBC. Asked whether he would keep her on, he said, "I'm going to let her make that decision." Axios carried a longer version: "The news has been so nasty to her. I've never seen anything like it actually. And I said to her, 'honestly, if I were you, I'd reconsider. You think about it, but I would reconsider.'" A senior White House official said, "POTUS is a big fan of Katie's, and what POTUS said to the reporters is exactly what he said in private."

Fourteen Minutes and Three Questions

She held one briefing, on Tuesday 13 October, lasting about 14 minutes and including questions from three reporters. The three she called on were Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail. She looked downward and often read directly from a script; she paused and grinned when she uttered the words "Department of War"; and she stumbled on a question about her own background, mixing up the words "husband" and "president." The one piece of news she broke was that the White House had asked the US ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, to resign. Guilfoyle did so immediately. Her opening monologue praised a "booming economy" and "a great relationship with Venezuela," and she promised to continue her predecessor's policy of bringing "new media" into the room. "We love new media and we want to be able to embrace it," she said. She later travelled with Trump to campaign events but did not hold another briefing. One White House official, quoted anonymously by MS NOW, said she needed to "get much better fast."

The Bar Exam Question

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing a person with direct knowledge of the matter, that Zacharia failed an attempt to pass the California bar exam after graduating from law school. A senior administration official confirmed on Thursday that she did not pass the California bar exam - a narrower statement than the Journal's. Zacharia told the right-wing activist Jack Posobiec in an interview on Thursday that she had not passed the exam, and she told Fox News that she failed and never retook it, because she was moving to China. On the South Lawn, Trump stepped aside to let her answer a question about where she had passed the bar. "When I moved to China," she said over the whir of Marine One's rotor blades. It is not clear whether she had finished the sentence. She later told The New York Times that she had misheard the question, believing she had been asked where she went after law school, and that she could not move closer to the president to hear it properly over the noise.

No Record in California

The independent outlet Popular Information, written by the journalist Judd Legum, reported that she did not appear to be licensed in any state. It said the same was true in all 50 states it had queried, plus Washington, D.C. Rick Coca, a spokesperson for the State Bar of California, said the bar has "no record of Kate Sharon Zacharia or Kate Sharon Black," or any version of her married or maiden names, "having been licensed to practice law in California." The watchdog group Campaign for Accountability then filed a complaint with the bar asking it to investigate whether she misrepresented herself as a lawyer in violation of California law. The State Bar said it could not confirm whether it had received the complaint or was conducting an investigation, citing confidentiality laws. A CNN review of her broadcast appearances found at least six instances in which she described herself as a lawyer or a corporate lawyer in her own words. The complaint is an allegation; no finding has been made.

What the White House Says

The White House passed along a statement from Zacharia: "I practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials." CNN rendered the same statement as "practiced international transactional law." White House communications director Steven Cheung called her "uniquely qualified and whip smart" and said she "will do an incredible job as press secretary." Cheung also attacked the watchdog group that filed the complaint as a "radical leftist-organization run by rabid numbskulls" in a social media post on Wednesday, without offering new information about her legal qualifications. Trump separately said she was hired as a White House spokesperson, not as an attorney. Axios reported he was blindsided when he learned she was not an attorney, the word he had used for her on Truth Social when he announced the hire. CNN also noted that in the 2024 tax filing of Fix California, the advocacy group where her LinkedIn profile lists her as general counsel, her name appears as a fundraiser.

What the China Experts Say

China's National Unified Legal Professional Qualification Examination can be taken only by Chinese citizens, and three law professors who specialise in Chinese law told The Hill what that implies. Taisu Zhang of Yale Law School wrote: "I don't believe that she could have taken the Chinese bar exam - American citizens are not, by rule, allowed to sit for it, and there's no apparent reason to believe that she could have made some special arrangement." He added that it is possible to do international transaction work at a firm without passing a bar exam, because many firms let junior associates begin transactional work while limiting what they may do until they qualify. Donald Clarke of George Washington University pointed to the nationality provision. "To the best of my knowledge, Zacharia has never claimed to be a Chinese national," he said.

How She Got the Job

Announcing the hire on Truth Social on 9 October, Trump called her "a distinguished Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, an attorney, and a frequent Commentator on outlets, including Fox News and Newsmax," and added that she had "an unblemished record of support." Before choosing her, Trump wanted the former Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, two administration sources said, but she signalled she would not take the job; the conservative commentator Scott Jennings was in contention but was not offered it. Her hiring was solely a Trump decision, furthered with the strong input of his personal assistant Natalie Harp. She flew to Washington on the Thursday and met the president; on Friday he offered her the job on the spot. Her arrival concerned some staffers who feared she wanted to replace them; she denied that and tried to put their minds at ease.

A Press Room Already Under Reconstruction

The office began with George E. Akerson, a former journalist who became Herbert Hoover's press secretary in 1929, and the job has rarely been harder to hold than now. Under Trump, and under Leavitt in particular, it has been less about disseminating information than about holding a line against a press the president calls "fake news." Leavitt's 17-month run was defined by that posture, and she was named in at least one lawsuit about White House media access. Three major outlets - CNN, MS NOW and Politico - are fighting to regain White House access after Trump banished them last month, saying he did not like their coverage. CNN noted an awkward parallel: Republicans attacked Michigan's Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, for not being a doctor.

Eighteen Days Out, No Replacement

The White House had not announced a replacement as of Friday. Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy said he spoke with Trump that day and that the president is in "no rush" to name one. Her departure leaves a key communications role vacant 18 days before the midterms. "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," he said at a rally in Durant, Oklahoma this month. Outlets describe the exit in different words: AP, citing a person familiar with the personnel decision, reported she was leaving; Axios headlined it "ousted"; and an ABC affiliate's headline said Trump "fired" her after five days, citing advisers. DW reported that she would be the shortest-serving press secretary in White House history. NBC noted that her time was even shorter than Anthony Scaramucci's 11-day run as White House communications director, a different job. Scaramucci posted on X that "records are made to be broken," adding that he took no pleasure in other people's pain.

By Jessica Ali, Staff Writer

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Sources: NBC News, The Associated Press, CNN, Axios, CNBC, The Hill, DW, Reuters, PBS NewsHour and the State Bar of California. Photographs: Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks and Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images, via CNN.