Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, faced intense scrutiny from news outlets including the rightwing cable network Fox News amid growing questions over her legal credentials.
During an appearance on Fox on Friday – her fifth day as Donald Trump’s chief spokesperson – Zacharia was asked if she still has the confidence of the US president. “I’m standing here,” she replied.
It comes as Zacharia, who describes herself as a lawyer, faces scrutiny over her professional background after admitting she did not pass the bar exam.
On Thursday evening, Fox News host Sean Hannity grilled Zacharia about her first press briefing on Tuesday, in which she read directly from notes and occasionally stumbled over her words for 14 minutes.
“What happened?” Hannity – a close ally of Trump – asked Zacharia. “How did you feel it went personally?”
Zacharia quickly defended herself, saying she had little time to prep between accepting the job and holding her first press briefing and then insisted the conservative Daily Mail, one of only three outlets she took questions from, was “not known to be a conservative outlet”.
The new press secretary declined to explain why she took just three questions, but said going forward she would be “very well prepared on the briefing” and “would love, and do love, questions”.
Zacharia, a former conservative commentator, detailed the whirlwind sprint to install her as Trump’s new press secretary in an interview with the Guardian on Thursday. She replaces Karoline Leavitt, who left her role in August.
Zacharia previously served as an adviser to Trump Media Group, which owns the president’s Truth Social platform, and also had a brief stint as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.
Her introduction to the White House press corps has been rocky – between a press briefing criticized for being too short and allegations that she misrepresented herself as a lawyer.
Zacharia, who graduated from Pepperdine University’s law school, had called herself a “lawyer”, and Trump identified Zacharia as an “attorney” when announcing her appointment. She had previously shared social media posts that also identified her as an “attorney”, which she defended on Hannity by saying “they were retweets”.
But reports emerged this week revealing Zacharia never passed the bar exam, which she later confirmed. Zacharia has said she identified herself as a “lawyer”, not an “attorney”, to distinguish herself from a licensed legal adviser.
“Why get into this long-drawn-out definition of the difference between a lawyer and an attorney? Because I don’t think most people see much of a distinction,” Hannity said.
Pushback on Zacharia continued on Friday morning when Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones said: “You know, Katie, it’s been a tough week for you. It’s not an easy job to be the press secretary, and you never want to be the story.
“Do you wish you would have disclosed to the president about the bar and not passing the bar?” Jones asked.
“Those questions weren’t asked” in her interviews with the president, she replied, dismissing them as unimportant. “I’m being hired as White House press secretary, not White House counsel.”
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