Five days. That\u2019s how long Katie Zacharia lasted as White House press secretary \u2014 and now she\u2019s out.<\/p>\n
Senior administration officials confirmed Friday that Zacharia is leaving the podium job and transitioning into a new role to be announced later<\/strong>, NBC News, CBS News, the Associated Press, The Washington Post and Politico reported. She had succeeded Karoline Leavitt, who left at the end of August after serving since the start of Trump\u2019s term in January 2025.<\/p>\n Trump announced the appointment the previous Friday. Her first briefing came Tuesday morning after the holiday weekend. It lasted under 15 minutes<\/strong>, with few questions. She couldn\u2019t say whether the United States had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine. During that same briefing, after a reporter asked about misconduct allegations, she announced Trump had asked Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign as U.S. ambassador to Greece. Guilfoyle denied the allegations and stepped down within hours.<\/p>\n Then the scrutiny hit. The Wall Street Journal first reported she had represented herself as a lawyer but had not passed the California bar<\/strong>. A senior administration official confirmed it Thursday. Zacharia told Jack Posobiec Thursday she hadn\u2019t passed. She\u2019s a Pepperdine Law graduate who said she practiced law in China; NBC found no evidence she was licensed in any state, and experts say only Chinese citizens can sit for the Chinese bar. The Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the California State Bar.<\/p>\n Earlier Friday, Trump said the media treated her \u201cnastily,\u201d told her she doesn\u2019t have to do this, and said he would let her decide. He added that if he were her he\u2019d \u201creconsider,\u201d and mentioned her \u201cbeautiful husband and family.\u201d<\/p>\n The tenure is shorter than Anthony Scaramucci\u2019s 11 days<\/strong> as White House communications director in the first term. Scaramucci posted: \u201cRecords are made to be broken. But I take no please in other people\u2019s pain.\u201d<\/p>\n The exit leaves a vacancy less than three weeks before the midterms, with Trump already complaining about bad PR. Sources say she was still scheduled for dinner Friday with Vice President JD Vance\u2019s family at the Naval Observatory.<\/p>\n Sources:<\/strong> NBC News \u2014 White House press secretary Katie Zacharia out after 5 days<\/a> \u00b7 AP \u2014 Katie Zacharia out as Trump press secretary<\/a> \u00b7 CBS News \u2014 Trump\u2019s Katie Zacharia White House press secretary<\/a><\/p>\n Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bar-exam scrutiny piled up, Trump told her to reconsider, and Katie Zacharia is already out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bb-zacharia-press-1016.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}