Trump’s press secretary Katie Zacharia set to leave after just five days

Washington: Donald Trump’s embattled new press secretary Katie Zacharia is set to leave after just five days after the US president cast doubt on her tenability and encouraged her to reconsider her position.

It follows a poor debut performance on Tuesday (US time) at the White House where Zacharia – a conservative media commentator – read awkwardly from a prepared script, took few questions and fumbled her responses.

She was also caught up in a furore over whether she misrepresented her legal qualifications to the president, having now admitted that she never passed the bar exam despite marketing herself as a lawyer.

Trump told reporters on Friday that he urged Zacharia to rethink the job. “I just spoke to her about it. I said, ‘Katie, is this for you?’ Because she’s been treated very rough, and she’s a nice person,” he said.

“I said to her, ‘Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider’. You think about it. But I would reconsider. She’s got a beautiful husband and family. I said, ‘You should reconsider because you don’t want to go through this’.”

Minutes after Trump made the remarks while departing the White House, several US news outlets including CNN and The New York Times reported that Zacharia had been fired, citing people familiar with the matter.

This masthead contacted the White House for clarification but did not immediately receive a response.

But Trump’s remarks left little possibility that Zacharia could continue in the role. “Maybe it’s not for her,” he said. Asked if he was going to keep her, Trump said: “I don’t know, we’ll see. I’m going to let her make that decision.”

Zacharia did not accompany Trump as he left the White House for a rally in Georgia on Friday. Communications director Steven Cheung was present on the South Lawn instead as the president took questions from reporters.

The 41-year-old Zacharia’s first week in the high-pressure role included unusually combative interviews on Fox News on Thursday night and Friday morning, both of which Trump watched.

Anchors Sean Hannity and Lawrence Jones separately grilled Zacharia over her legal qualifications and why she had not told Trump she never passed the bar.

“Those questions weren’t asked,” she told Jones.

Zacharia also explained that she was only offered the job last Wednesday, flew to Washington and attended a meeting at the White House on Friday, flew home to California on Saturday and then back to Washington on Sunday before starting in the job on Monday and briefing the press on Tuesday morning.

“What I feel is I really stepped up to the plate to do the press conference with very little prep time,” she told Hannity. “I received briefing materials in the morning on Tuesday.”

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