Washington — Katie Zacharia, President Trump’s new White House press secretary, is being removed from the role after just five days on the job, two U.S. officials told CBS News on Friday.
The news capped a tumultuous week for Zacharia, marked by a heavily criticized performance in the White House briefing room and growing questions over whether she had misrepresented herself as a lawyer, despite never having passed the bar.
One aide told CBS News that Zacharia spent the week unusually isolated and didn’t function as a press secretary.
“No one thought she was sticking around long enough to even involve her in actual decision-making,” the aide said.
Some White House staff learned about the change from news coverage. The New York Times first reported that she had been fired as press secretary. Zacharia was expected to start a new role in the administration soon, sources familiar with the discussions said.
CBS News reached out to Zacharia for comment, but she did not immediately reply. She was seen at the White House as recently as Friday morning. She and her family were invited to dinner with Vice President JD Vance on Friday night.
Leaving the White House shortly before news of Zacharia’s departure as press secretary broke, the president signaled her tenure could be coming to an end, saying he told her he would “reconsider” taking the job if he were in her shoes.
“They’ve been so nasty to her,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the press. “I said, to her, ‘Honestly if I were you, I’d reconsider. You think about it. But I would reconsider. You got a beautiful husband and family.’ I met the family yesterday. Beautiful kids. It’s like from a picture postcard. I said, ‘You should reconsider. Because you don’t want to go through this.'”
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The abrupt shift came one week to the day after Mr. Trump announced Zacharia as his pick to replace Karoline Leavitt, who stepped aside in August. The White House has not yet indicated who may replace Zacharia.
Zacharia’s qualifications and background quickly came under scrutiny as questions arose over her résumé.
CBS News and other outlets reported that Zacharia has represented herself as a lawyer over the years. She graduated from Pepperdine Law School but failed the California bar exam in 2011, a fact she acknowledged on Thursday. She told the New York Times that the president of Pepperdine University advised her at one point that she could call herself a “lawyer” but not an “attorney.”
Zacharia told conservative commentator Jack Posobiec that she never described herself as an “attorney at law,” and said there’s a “lot of misinformation around the fact that I labeled myself a lawyer.”
“I was very careful how I executed this. I never came across as someone who was an attorney at law,” Zacharia said.
In her first and only press briefing on Tuesday, a visibly nervous Zacharia spoke from prepared remarks for about 10 minutes before taking questions from just three outlets — Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail — for another five. She defended her performance on Fox News, saying she had little time to prepare.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc via Getty Images 
“What I feel is I really stepped up to the plate to do the press conference, Sean, with very little prep time,” Zacharia told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday. “I received briefing materials in the morning of Tuesday and I went to deliver all of the great results that President Trump is delivering for the American people that are not often spread in the national media.”
Hannity, a Trump ally, noted that her performance was “widely panned.”
The about-face on Zacharia’s role was reminiscent of the tenure of Anthony Scaramucci, who survived just 11 days as White House communications director during Mr. Trump’s first term.
“Records are made to be broken,” Scaramucci said in a post on X. “But I take no pleasure in other people’s pain.”
