Katie Zacharia Out as White House Press Secretary After Five Days

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Harris
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Key Points

  • Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after five days, NBC News and NPR reported Friday, Oct. 16, citing administration officials.
  • President Trump said Friday he told her she did not “have to do this” and that he would “reconsider” in her position.
  • White House officials say she is “transitioning” to another role, while CNN and The Guardian reported she was fired. No successor has been named.
  • Her exit followed a debut briefing of under 15 minutes and her acknowledgment this week that she had not passed the bar exam.
  • The vacancy comes less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after five days on the job. NBC News first reported her departure Friday afternoon, Oct. 16, citing administration officials and a source familiar with the decision. CNN called it the shortest stint as White House press secretary in anyone’s memory.

How the exit is described depends on who is speaking. A senior administration official told NBC she is moving into a new role that will be announced later. CNN and The Guardian, citing Trump advisers and a White House official, reported that she was fired. Trump, speaking to reporters on Friday, framed it as her choice.

What happened

Trump announced Zacharia’s appointment on Friday, Oct. 9, to succeed Karoline Leavitt. Zacharia gave her first briefing on Tuesday, Oct. 13, one day after starting the job and right after the three-day holiday weekend, according to NBC News.

That briefing lasted less than 15 minutes. She took only a few questions, NBC reported. During the session she also announced that Trump had asked Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign as ambassador to Greece, according to NBC.

Scrutiny then turned to her legal credentials. Zacharia, a graduate of Pepperdine’s law school, had described herself as a lawyer. A senior administration official confirmed Thursday that she did not pass the California bar exam, a detail first reported by The Wall Street Journal, NBC News reported. Zacharia said in interviews this week that she had not passed, and NBC said it found no evidence she is licensed to practice law in any state.

This week, the nonpartisan watchdog Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the State Bar of California asking it to investigate whether she broke the law by calling herself a lawyer while unlicensed, according to NBC. The complaint is a request for an investigation, not a finding of wrongdoing.

Latest development

On Friday, Trump told reporters he had spoken with Zacharia minutes earlier. “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 said, according to NBC. Asked whether he would keep her in the job, he said, “I’m going to let her make that decision,” and added that he would “reconsider” if he were in her shoes.

Later that afternoon, officials said she was leaving. A senior White House official told NPR that Zacharia is “transitioning out” of the job. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a statement to CNN that she “will continue to support the President as she transitions to a new role.” In a social media statement Friday evening, Zacharia praised the president and wrote, “It was an honor to work for him,” as quoted by NBC and The Guardian.

No successor has been named. Two sources familiar with the president’s thinking told NBC that Trump is highly unlikely to choose a new press secretary any time soon, and Trump told Fox News on Friday that he was in no rush to fill the job, ABC News (Australia) reported. “A lot of people want the job,” Trump said, according to CNN.

Why it matters

The press secretary is the administration’s most visible daily spokesperson, and the post is now vacant less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Trump has complained publicly that his party is paying a price for poor messaging. “We’re doing a great job in running the country, but we’re not doing a good job of public relations,” he told supporters at a rally in Durant, Oklahoma, this month, NBC reported.

The White House was already without regular briefings. Leavitt, who had held the job since January 2025, left at the end of August, and NPR reported that there have not been regular press briefings for months.

Zacharia came to the podium as a conservative commentator who had served as a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social, according to NBC. Her time in the role was shorter even than Anthony Scaramucci’s 11 days as White House communications director in Trump’s first term, NBC noted.

Administration messaging was also at issue in our earlier report on the White House position on repaying taxpayers for ads that already aired.

What happens next

The White House has not said who will brief reporters while the post is vacant. NPR’s reporting suggests Trump, who often takes reporters’ questions himself, will continue to act as his own spokesperson in the meantime.

Officials say Zacharia’s next role will be announced later. Watch for that announcement, any formal choice of a new press secretary, and whether regular briefings resume before Election Day on Nov. 3.

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