Katie Zacharia is "transitioning out" of her role as press secretary, according to a White House official not authorized to speak on the record, marking a stunning turn of events for the spokeswoman who officially started Monday and is out by Friday.

Zacharia's first briefing was Tuesday morning where she faced scrutiny both over her performance—during which she delivered a lengthy and halting opening statement read from notes and called on only three reporters—and her legal credentials.

President Trump (80) on Friday cast doubt on the future of Zacharia, saying he had a discussion with her just before leaving for a campaign rally in Georgia (where he rambled about naming an ocean after himself).
....
The 41-year-old graduate of Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and self-described attorney had stepped in as Trump's chief spokesperson at a moment when his popularity has fallen to record lows and Republicans are scrambling to limit potential losses in the midterm elections.

Much of the scrutiny of Zacharia focused on her credentials as an attorney. While standing with Trump, she was asked by reporters where she passed the bar exam.

"When I moved to China," Zacharia answered, an apparent reference to what she has described on her LinkedIn page as a period of time from 2011 through 2013 spent working for a prominent Beijing-based law firm called Zhon Lun.
....
More recently, Zacharia has served as a communications advisor for the Trump Media & Technology Group, the firm that operates Trump's Truth Social platform. She has also been a frequent pro-Trump commentator on conservative outlets including Fox News and Newsmax.

https://www.npr.org/2026/10/16/nx-s1-600...rys-future

Why is this allowed? There is already a thread on this. Continual spam from this guy.

It's all Trump, all the time. This dude is obsessed with our POTUS. He just keeps repeating himself. Every thread he creates is practically a carbon copy of the one right before. He responds to himself when no one else does, just to bump his threads up. If he isn't the classic definition of a BBS troll, I don't know what he is.

But that's just my opinion. I won't second-guess the mods anymore, now that the main source of irritation among them is gone.

I have to admit that while I was away, I created another username and was still able to read threads, the poll he created didn't go as well as he might have expected and if I'm telling the truth, reading the responses to that poll thread was hugely amusing.

Also the rumors that I doxed him fueled speculation from many here who I thought of as allies that I never expected to see. It showed me who my "real friends" here are and aren't. There are a few people here who supported me during the slanderous behavior I witnessed while I was gone.

Oh heck, I'm doing what the loons here do, derailing a thread.

In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

(10-17-2026 07:18 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Why is this allowed? There is already a thread on this. Continual spam from this guy.

Currently 11 threads on the front page started by CP, 9 by Git.

Are you complaining in CPs threads?

(10-17-2026 07:54 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  I have to admit that while I was away, I created another username and was still able to read threads.

Let me be the first to guess: "TigerBlue4TheMoment".

(10-17-2026 08:49 AM)AdoptedMonarch Wrote:  

(10-17-2026 07:54 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  I have to admit that while I was away, I created another username and was still able to read threads.

Let me be the first to guess: "TigerBlue4TheMoment".

Close but just a little outside.

In a stunning reveal, Bill Dazzle and TigerBlue4Ever now acknowledge that, for the period during which TB4E did not post via his handle, he actually assumed the posting name of Bill Dazzle. This allowed Bill to take a much-needed break from the board and, more importantly, for TB4E to experience what it is like to be a neurotic and eccentric buffoon.

On a serious note, TB4E is an important contributor to this board, and I'm so glad he's back. I need to be reeled in on occasion and no poster (other than maybe BTF) keeps me on my toes more effectively than TigerBlue4Ever.

His new press secretary’s rocky 14-minute debut at the White House podium was being met with decidedly negative reviews. An hour later, she’d offered a perplexing response when asked where she’d passed the bar exam. His own advisers had watched it all with a degree of horror.

Trump (80), however, told Katie Zacharia on the flight to Alaska that she performed well, a source familiar with the conversation told CNN. It was her first time on Air Force One.

Three days and an onslaught of scrutiny later, Zacharia was dismissed from her post, summarily ending the shortest stint as White House press secretary in anyone’s memory. Plans to move east from California with her family were put on hold. It was all, multiple Trump advisers said, a real flop.
....
The entire episode underscored the uneasy atmosphere that has pervaded Trump’s inner circle less than three weeks before the midterm elections. Zacharia’s sudden hiring and equally swift firing were a product of Trump’s impulse to hire a loyal television defender he’d grown somewhat enamored with from afar, without much thought to the other requirements of the job.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/16/polit...-secretary

Quote:(Katie) Zacharia’s stunningly short and turbulent tenure as press secretary is far from the biggest or most substantial foul-up of Trump’s second term. But it does rank remarkably high on the embarrassment quotient.

In one fell swoop over the course of a week, the White House confirmed how rudderless, impulsive and hubristic its entire operation is—and with just a few weeks to go before voters render their judgment on it in the 2026 midterm elections.
....
Given that Trump personally selected Zacharia and he is generally loath to admit he’s made a mistake, it took a pretty rough week to prompt her ouster.

In her inaugural briefing on Tuesday, Zacharia spent most of a 14-minute appearance nervously reading from a script that she repeatedly stumbled over before calling on just three reporters from conservative-friendly outlets.

Then she went on a stream of media appearances that only reinforced she would likely be a liability at the White House lectern. Trump subsequently pulled the plug without even giving her a second briefing.

It’s embarrassing for a number of reasons.

It’s not as if Zacharia was the product of a process that needed to be rushed; former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced her departure more than two months ago, on August 12. That’s plenty of time to make sure you have the right person.

The White House did have a series of candidates, CNN has reported, but some of them suffered from the unforgivable deficit of having occasionally said negative things about Trump. Zacharia’s name emerged suddenly late in the process, after not being previously considered. And as with so many things, it appears those around Trump quickly turned his whim into reality.
....
He had undoubtedly seen her defending him on cable news plenty of times, his preferred method for screening job candidates. But serving as press secretary isn’t the same as doing TV hits with often-friendly hosts. And her briefing performance was objectively brutal.

Then the White House compounded its mess.

It dispatched Zacharia on a media tour of friendly outlets, apparently in hopes of rallying support and showing she was up to the task. But it proved the opposite.

She was peppered with tough questions from conservative Trump allies who were ostensibly worried about her ability to handle being the face of the White House’s messaging.
....
One of those skeptical conservative Trump allies was Fox News’ Sean Hannity. On Tuesday night, he was reading from the typical playbook: bashing the “abusively biased, corrupt news media” for being mean to Zacharia. But during his interview with her Thursday night, he asked her a series of sober and probing questions.

Trump on Friday bemoaned how Zacharia was “made to suffer like she’s suffered at the hands of the press.” But it’s a lot harder to make that argument when your own media allies have done the scrutinizing. (Some of them also dinged Zacharia for her resume inflation.) And similar to Hannity, the White House now has egg on its face after initially vouching for Zacharia.

White House communications director Steven Cheung assured in an excitable social media post Tuesday morning that Zacharia had a “tremendous start” in which she “commanded the room.” A White House press release hailed her “commanding” performance and clipped what it cast as her highlights. Later in the week, Cheung insisted she would be remembered as “one of the all-time greats” by the end of Trump’s second term.

Oops.

But perhaps the worst part of this whole episode for the White House is that it further solidifies a pre-existing narrative of Trump’s chaotic leadership style and inability to effectively manage the federal government.

There’s been plenty of grist for that mill, including Trump’s recently aborted decisions to run taxpayer-funded political ads and to live stream an execution—both of which 80%-plus Americans opposed.

Earlier in his presidency, Trump rained chaos on the government by giving Elon Musk apparent carte blanche to do, seemingly, more or less whatever he wanted. Many people who were fired later had to be reinstated when it was discovered that, actually, they did really important jobs—or couldn’t legally be fired.

There was Signalgate and the whiplash over Trump’s tariffs and the administration’s inability to get its story straight on the Iran war.

Similar to Zacharia, Trump also removed officials shortly after the Senate confirmed them, including the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his IRS commissioner. (In the latter case, he also removed the acting replacement after less than a week.) His first national security adviser was moved to another job after less than three months, thanks to Signalgate.

And the American people appear to have noticed. A CNN poll in July showed they disapproved of Trump’s management of the federal government, 65%-35%.

Fully 74% of independents and even 28% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents disapproved.
....

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/17/polit...p-midterms

Just another failure in the long line of trying to find a Ivanka clone.