Katie Zacharia is no longer White House press secretary after just five days on the job, a senior administration official, an administration official and a source familiar with the decision said.
A senior administration official said Zacharia was transitioning to a new role that would be announced later.
The news follows Zacharia’s widely criticized first press briefing and the revelation that she ran as a lawyer but failed to pass her bar exam.
Zacharia leaves the station as she entered it: quickly. President Donald Trump’s rapid elevation from conservative media commentator to a high-level White House post came as a surprise. The president announced her nomination Friday and she gave her first briefing Tuesday morning, just after a three-day holiday weekend.
His sudden departure will leave a key White House communications position vacant less than three weeks before the midterm elections, as Trump has publicly complained that his administration and party suffer from poor public relations.
“Our country has never done better,” he told supporters this month at a rally in Durant, Oklahoma. “We can’t get the message out because of the fake news and because … we do a great job running the country, but we don’t do a good job of public relations.”
Earlier Friday, Trump said he would let Zacharia decide whether to remain his press secretary after suggesting she was treated harshly by the media during her first week on the job.
“She was treated, I would say pretty unkindly, 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 to,” Trump said.
Asked if he would keep her in the job, the president responded, “I’m going to let her make that decision.” »
Trump also said that if he were in her place he would “reconsider” and said he would have a conversation with her later about her situation.
Zacharia is scheduled to have dinner Friday with Vice President JD Vance and his family at his residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., two sources familiar with the matter said.
Zacharia held her first brief press briefing Tuesday, just a day after taking office, and faced scrutiny after presenting herself as a lawyer but acknowledged this week that she failed to pass her bar exam after law school.
Zacharia’s first White House press briefing lasted less than 15 minutes, during which she took only a few questions from reporters and was unable to answer a single one about whether the United States had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine.
During the briefing, Zacharia announced that Trump had asked Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign as U.S. ambassador to Greece, sharing that information after a reporter asked whether the president was considering firing Guilfoyle over allegations of misconduct, which she denied. Guilfoyle announced she would resign within hours.
Zacharia had succeeded Karoline Leavitt, who left the White House post at the end of August after serving in the role since the start of Trump’s term in January 2025.
Before her extraordinarily brief stint in the White House, Zacharia made a name for herself as a conservative commentator. She previously served as a senior communications advisor for the Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates Trump’s Truth Social website.
Zacharia’s time in the White House was even shorter than Anthony Scaramucci’s time as White House communications director during Trump’s first term. Scaramucci held the position for only 11 days, and his name became a descriptor for officials whose tenures were extremely brief.
Scaramucci posted on X on Friday: “Records are made to be broken. But I don’t appreciate other people’s pain.»
Earlier this week, the nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the State Bar of California requesting an investigation into whether Zacharia broke the law by calling herself an attorney even though she is not licensed.
Zacharia was asked Monday about the bar exam she took as she and the president stopped on the South Lawn to talk to reporters before boarding. His response was difficult to hear over the whir of Marine One’s helicopter blades, but part of Zacharia’s response included “when I moved to China.”
A senior administration official confirmed Thursday that Zacharia did not pass the California bar exam, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Zacharia said in an interview with right-wing activist Jack Posobiec on Thursday that she failed to pass the bar exam.
There is no evidence she is licensed to practice law in any state, according to an NBC News review. Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine Law and said she practiced law in China. Legal experts told NBC News that only Chinese citizens can take the Chinese bar exam. Zacharia could have consulted on cross-border legal matters, an expert told NBC News.
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