Out after five days: Trump's press secretary Katie Zacharia leaves
Katie Zacharia is leaving the White House after less than a week, following a widely criticised first briefing and doubts over her legal credentials. Trump denies firing her.
Archive image · Photo: Kellerbn at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5 (cropped and resized)
Katie Zacharia, appointed White House press secretary only days ago, is leaving the post. A White House official confirmed to AFP on Friday that she was "transitioning" out of the role; The New York Times and other outlets reported that she had been fired. Her first briefing on Tuesday lasted less than 15 minutes, and she took only three questions. According to the Kyiv Post, it is believed to be the shortest tenure of any press secretary in U.S. history.
Criticism centred on her legal credentials: the 41-year-old holds a law degree from a California university but acknowledged that she had never passed the bar exam. "It was never my intent to go into the practice of law," she told Fox News host Sean Hannity. President Donald Trump denied firing her, saying she had been "brutalized by the media." He said he had told her shortly before: "You don't have to do this if you don't want to." It was not immediately clear who would take over the role.