Katie Zacharia Fired as White House Press Secretary After Just 5 Days
Published 09:59 17 Oct 2026 GMT+1
After Donald Trump suggested that 'maybe' the job wasn't right for her, Katie Zacharia called it 'an honor to work for him'
Katie Zacharia has praised Donald Trump after she was axed from her role as White House press secretary following a rocky inaugural briefing.
A person familiar with the matter said on Friday (16 October) that Zacharia, 42, would be transitioning out of the role after just five days in it.
Taking to X, she wrote alongside a photo of herself and Trump that it was ‘an honor to work for him’.
“President Trump is a kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic, and hardworking man,” she penned.
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“I wish more Americans appreciated him. No one will ever make America great the way he has and continues to.”
During the 14-minute briefing on Tuesday, Zacharia visibly struggled to answer just three questions. She spent more than half that time reading pre-prepared remarks.
Zacharia struggled during her first inaugural briefing (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
When asked by Fox News if the US had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, she said she would ‘have to get back to you on that’.
There was also an awkward moment when she referred to ‘my president’ instead of ‘my husband’.
Following on from Karoline Leavitt, Zacharia was a surprise choice when Trump announced her appointment earlier this month.
He said he told Zacharia that she might want to change her mind about the job, and said he thought she had been treated unfairly by the press.
“I told her, ‘I think you’re better off being happy’,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn as he left for a rally in Georgia.
Zacharia praised Trump and said that it was ‘an honor to work for him’ (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“I said, ‘Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider’. I said, ‘You think about it, but I would reconsider’.
“‘Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this’,” and that he wanted ‘her to have a good life’ and not be subjected to criticism, which he likened to being ‘brutalised by the media’.
On Friday, Zacharia was asked by Fox News if she had the president’s confidence and responded: “I hope to be able to build the trust and confidence of everyone around me.”
Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine University's Seaver College in 2007 and the Caruso School of Law in 2011.
Zacharia was fired after just five days in the job (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
That year, she married film producer Tyler Zacharia and the couple has four children.
She has spoken publicly about being adopted as a newborn and meeting her biological mother Ruth at 18.
After graduating, she and her husband moved to Beijing, where she worked as an international legal consultant/associate at the Zhong Lun Law Firm and managed fundraising and communications for Compassion for Migrant Children.
However, the conservative commentator had long called herself a lawyer when she had not passed a bar exam.
Before becoming White House Press Secretary in October 2026, Zacharia worked as a senior communications adviser for Trump Media & Technology Group, the company operating Truth Social, and briefly served as the deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in early 2026 before resigning after about a month.
Featured Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Topics: US News, Donald Trump
