Donald Trump’s second administration has been engulfed in a fresh bout of internal turmoil after the president dismissed his newly appointed press secretary, Katie Zacharia, just five days into her tenure, reviving memories of the personnel upheaval that marked his first term. The departure comes little more than two weeks before the US midterm elections, with Republicans facing unfavourable polling and growing uncertainty over their prospects of retaining control of Congress.
Zacharia’s appointment was announced by Trump on his social media platform on Friday. She began work on Monday and held her first press briefing on Tuesday, lasting just 14 minutes. Nervous and poorly prepared, she struggled to answer reporters’ questions, prompting speculation in Washington about how long she would remain in the position. By Friday, after a week of damaging headlines and unsuccessful attempts to contain the controversy surrounding her qualifications, she had been dismissed.
The immediate controversy began with reports that Zacharia had misrepresented herself as a lawyer. Although she holds a law degree, she had not passed the examination required to practise law in the United States. She subsequently confirmed the distinction in interviews with conservative media outlets, where she faced unexpectedly difficult questioning. On Friday morning, she appeared on Fox News and spoke to reporters at the White House, insisting that working for Trump was a “dream come true” and declaring herself ready to give everything to the job. Shortly afterwards, the president effectively abandoned her.
Trump first told reporters that he had advised Zacharia to leave if she wanted to be “happy”. The White House then briefed the media that her departure was imminent. Within a short time, she was out of the job. The sequence of events suggested that her public assurances had been overtaken by a decision already taking shape within the administration.
The dismissal capped a turbulent week involving several figures close to the president. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former fiancée of Trump’s eldest son, resigned as US ambassador to Greece amid corruption allegations and pressure from the president. Paolo Zampolli, another Trump associate known for introducing him to his current wife, Melania, also departed the State Department. Meanwhile, Trump intervened in a dispute between two other allies, former Venezuela envoy Richard Grenell and Alina Habba, a lawyer who has accused Grenell of retaining nearly $6 million donated to the Kennedy Center by her husband, Turkish investor Turhan Mildon. The dispute is also linked to the business opportunities available in Venezuela following the departure of Nicolás Maduro, according to the source account.
The instability has coincided with reports in The Washington Post of growing internal manoeuvres to remove Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, after the midterm elections. Wiles has been regarded as a central figure in imposing order on the administration. During Trump’s first term, four officials held the chief-of-staff position; Joe Biden had two during his four years in office. Wiles’s own family has also attracted scrutiny, with her daughter at the centre of a controversy involving business dealings in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Trump did not consult Wiles before appointing Zacharia, according to reports cited in the source. The president reportedly made the choice personally after becoming frustrated with a succession of candidates presented to him, at a time when the midterm elections were approaching and Republican polling was deteriorating. His decision to select Zacharia appears to have prioritised her public loyalty and ability to defend him on television over her experience in managing the demanding White House press operation.
The position had remained vacant since Karoline Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary in history, left in August after 17 months in the role. Zacharia’s first briefing came 47 days after the previous appearance by someone holding the position. Leavitt had become a prominent defender of the administration’s Make America Great Again agenda, attacking political opponents and defending the president’s policies before sympathetic media audiences. Trump had not rushed to replace her, but eventually sought a successor as the election campaign intensified.
The White House needs an effective public communicator at a moment when Trump’s approval ratings and Republican polling remain under pressure. If Democrats regain control of one or both chambers of Congress, the administration could face a more difficult political environment. The source account suggests that Zacharia’s inability to withstand hostile questioning on Fox News, rather than her disastrous debut or the controversy over her qualifications alone, proved decisive in her removal.
The timing of her dismissal became particularly apparent through an interview she gave The Wall Street Journal on Friday, published hours after she had lost her job. The newspaper’s account portrayed a new press secretary who appeared unaware that her tenure was about to end. Her office contained few personal belongings, including a white orchid, a hair curler and a pair of high heels beside a toiletries bag. She told the newspaper that she had slept for only three hours because the previous day had been the birthday of one of her four children.
“My diet these days is little sleep, adrenaline through the roof and probably too much caffeine and nothing to eat,” Zacharia told the Journal. During the interview, someone knocked on her office door to tell her that Vice-President J. D. Vance wanted to speak with her. She did not return to the reporters. Meanwhile, Trump emerged to speak to journalists at the White House helipad and signalled that her future in the administration was over.
The episode also revived comparisons with Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former communications director, who lasted 11 days in the job during his first administration. On Tuesday, Scaramucci coined a new unit of measurement, the “scaramucci”, calculating that Zacharia had survived just 0.45 of one. “Records are there to be smashed,” he wrote on Friday. Now a critic of Trump, he also advised Zacharia on X to disconnect from the news and enjoy her family, adding: “In time, you’ll realise the universe did you a great favour.”
Zacharia has not announced her future plans and did not have time to relocate from California to Washington. Nor has she followed Scaramucci in publicly turning against the president. Instead, she ended her fifth and final day in the White House with a message praising Trump as “a kind, wonderful, cordial, attentive, enthusiastic and hardworking man”. She added: “No one will ever be able to make America great in the way he has and continues to do.” Her post concluded: “It was an honour to work for him.”
