White House official confirms Zacharia is ‘transitioning out’ from role of press secretary
And just like that, a White House official confirms to the Guardian that Katie Zacharia is “transitioning out” from her role as White House press secretary.
Key events
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is now on his way to Dalton, Georgia, where he’s set to hold a campaign rally ahead of the November midterms.
My colleague, George Chidi, is at the local airport where Trump was due to speak at 2.45pm ET. However, the president is running about an hour behind schedule.
We’ll bring you the latest as it gets under way.
Zacharia’s astonishingly short tenure as White House press secretary was punctuated by a 14-minute debut briefing on Tuesday that was widely slammed. Zacharia made little eye contact, seemed awkward and took only a handful of questions from three conservative outlets.
Speaking to the Guardian fewer than 24 hours ago, Zacharia had only got the job offer four days prior, on Friday 9 October, when she was summoned to Washington from her home in Los Angeles. She accepted the job on the same day before rushing home to be back in DC on Sunday, ready to begin work.
In some ways her comment to the Guardian that it was “unknown” how much she would engage with reporters was foreboding, given the fact she was let go today.
During her first, and final, week in the role Zacharia had to answer for several dubious claims about her legal credentials, before she admitted to failing the California bar exam before moving to China, where she allegedly worked as an “associate” at a law firm in Beijing. Nonetheless, Zacharia defended her decision to refer to herself as a “lawyer”.
White House official confirms Zacharia is ‘transitioning out’ from role of press secretary
And just like that, a White House official confirms to the Guardian that Katie Zacharia is “transitioning out” from her role as White House press secretary.
Given the recent reporting it’s worth noting that five days on the job would make Katie Zacharia the shortest-serving press secretary in White House history.
A notable comparison is Anthony Scaramucci – previously Trump’s White House communications director – who only lasted 11 days during his first administration.
Katie Zacharia fired as White House press secretary – report
Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, has been fired from her role after just five days, according to the New York Times, citing three unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The Guardian has reached out to the White House and Zacharia for comment.
This comes after Donald Trump told reporters on Friday that he asked Zacharia to “reconsider” the job, following days of intense scrutiny around her legal credentials and a widely panned press briefing. The president said that Zacharia had been “treated very badly by the media”.
On Thursday, the new press secretary told the Guardian it was “unknown” how much she would actually interact with the media, and detailed that it was just six days between getting a call summoning her to Washington and stepping behind the press room podium for the first time.
Donald Trump was taking questions from reporters outside the White House when he made those comments about Katie Zacharia.
A reporter asked the president if he have liked to have known that Zacharia didn’t pass the bar. Trump replied:
Katie has been treated very badly by the media. Very, very badly. Very unfair. And I just spoke to her about it. I said – Katie, is this for you?
And she’s a nice person … But I said, is this for you, Katie, because honestly you don’t need this, you don’t have to be treated [this way].
He said that Fox News’s Sean Hannity was “a little bit tough” on her and said sh had been treated “pretty nastily”.
Asked if he was going to keep her in the role, Trump said: “I’m going to let her make that decision.”
He added: “Katie is off to a start that, the news has been so nasty to her … I told her, ‘Honestly, if I were you, I would reconsider’ … Maybe it’s not for her.”
Asked how much time he was going to give her and whether he wanted her to stick around ultimately, Trump replied: “I’ll talk to her when I get back.”
And with impeccable timing from my video colleagues, here’s a clip from Katie Zacharia’s interview last night with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, when she admitted that she did not pass the bar exam, after facing scrutiny about her legal career before becoming the top spokesperson for Trump.
Zacharia had previously said she practiced law before entering politics, and Trump had described her as an attorney.
Zacharia earned a law degree from Pepperdine University in 2011, according to the school. Nearly all licensed US lawyers first obtain a law degree, but law school graduates cannot legally practice law in the US without being admitted to a state bar. In China (where Zacharia lived after graduating from Pepperdine), the law requires practicing lawyers to be Chinese nationals. Foreign staff can advise and consult on legal matters but not practice law.
‘I will talk to her’: Trump says Zacharia ‘should reconsider’ White House spokeswoman role
We’re getting some lines through now on the news wires that Donald Trump has suggested that the role of White House press secretary is “not for” the embattled Katie Zacharia, who’s been on the defense since her shaky debut before reporters this week and a distracting semantics battle over whether or not she is a lawyer.
Trump said he “will talk to her” after already telling her “she should reconsider [the] role”.
I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
Pentagon reportedly holding off on releasing report on Iran school attack until after midterms
Top Pentagon officials have expressed their intention to hold off on releasing a report about a strike on an Iranian school that killed up to 168 people – most of them children – until after the US midterms, Bloomberg (paywall) reports today.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly “communicated these plans”, according to Bloomberg’s sources.
A UN fact-finding mission has determined there are reasonable grounds to believe the US was behind the strike on the school in Minab on 28 February, as well as a strike on a sports facility in Lamerd on the same date, and that these constituted war crimes.
The first cited strike involved a US Tomahawk missile that collapsed the roof of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, southern Iran, during morning classes on the first day of the US-Israeli war on Iran, killing 120 children aged seven to 12, as well as staff and parents.
The second cited strike, on the same date, targeted a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd with a weapon that scattered tungsten pellets.
The Guardian reported in September that the Pentagon’s own secretive investigation into the incident was understood to have concluded several months prior. There have been reports that senior US commanders had been warned that targeting data used during the war – including for the Minab strike – was dangerously outdated.
New filings show Democrats in key battlegrounds outpacing Republican fundraising
Democrats in key Senate battlegrounds have outpaced Republican fundraising, according to the most recent Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) quarterly filings.
While outside groups and Super Pacs have spent more advertising money to boost Republicans in many of these closely watched competitions, Democrats have had a stronger showing in the number of dollars their campaigns have received directly – leaving many with a strong cash-on-hand advantages going into the final stretch of the midterm elections.
According to the latest filings, James Talarico – the Democratic nominee in Texas who has surged in the polls – raised more than $60m in the last quarter (which ended on 30 September). Meanwhile, his Republican opponent, attorney general Ken Paxton, brought in just over $10m.
A similar disparity applies in the competitive races we’re watching this cycle. For example, in Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed raised more than $30m, compared with Mike Rogers’ $10m. Meanwhile in Maine, Troy Jackson’s campaign raised four times as much as Susan Collins: almost $20.5m compared with $5.2m.
