Trump, incredibly, has done something smart. (Since your jaw hit the floor take a minute…) His new Press Secretary’s first turn at the podium, a whole fourteen minutes long disaster. Incredibly she made it worse. In the aftermath she tried to gloss over that despite too many references of herself as a lawyer to count, she wasn’t one after all. It was too much even for legendary Fox “News” Trump fluffer Sean Hannity who put Zacharia on the spot. On camera. So Trump cut his losses and fired her.
Somewhere on the Commodores’ proverbial ‘Night Shift’ Freddy Mercury is singing a varied lyric from from the epic Bohemian Rhapsody – altering “Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?” to Scaramucci, Scaramuchi is it now a Zacharia? Records are made to be beaten but it was hard to imagine Scaramucci’s short stint working in the first Trump WH being surpassed (or underpassed?) but it has.
I’m sure there will be plenty of news coverage of this but the headline of this short article from The Independent tells you all you need to know: Trump admits mistake and fires Katie Zacharia after less than one week as press secretary – breaking record. Well, that ‘breaking record’ is the key part. For the record (pun intended) the official measure of getting quickly fired was named after the short tenure of Anthony Scaramucci as WH Communications Director back in Trump’s first term. The oft used term Scaramucci refers to a time frame of ten days (some count it as eleven) which is how long HE lasted working for Trump. Zacharia’s tenure was half that. I’ll bet all I have (admittedly not much) that the term “Zacharia” denoting a mere five days will enter the lexicon.
As incredible as the fact Trump did the wise thing and dumped her we have details, mostly provided by none other than Trump himself. Sure, he tried to spin it as being fatherly and giving her a choice but though she looks like a bimbo she did graduate from a good law school. Ok, so she failed the California Bar but that’s not an easy exam and she was literally newly married and preparing to move to China with her husband so I can cut her a bit of slack.
The point is she might not be savvy (has she never heard of ETTD Syndrome or did she naively think she was immune?) but she’s not a complete Stepford wife. She got the message. Leave quickly and quietly and she’ll be taken care of, or suffer the consequences of ticking Trump off by forcing him to outright and publicly say “You’re Fired” (funny how as President he is afraid to say the very words that made him famous on TV). She’d have paid bigly for forcing him to do so. I’m still stunned he so quickly agreed with EVERYONE (except Katie maybe) that she had to go and right quick. If she’d forced to be the bad guy she could kiss any future she might someday have good-freaking-bye.
Anyway, from the linked article we get some actual details on her interaction with Trump. It was a WH spokesperson who confirmed right after Trump left that Zacharia had indeed been canned. Or, as we’d say when I was on active duty in the Corps ‘sh!tcanned’ which seems a whole lot more accurate. Once in Georgia (for a rally) Trump spend some time answering reporters’ questions:
During a question-and-answer session with reporters, the president complained that his hand-picked choice for spokesperson had been treated “very, very badly, very unfairly” by news outlets — including a tough grilling by his own close friend, Fox News host Sean Hannity last night — and said he’d discussed whether Zacharia wanted to remain under such a tough media microscope.
“I said to Katie just two minutes ago, I said, Katie, you know, you don’t have to do this … the news has been so nasty to her. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I said, I said to her honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider. You think about it, but I wouldn’t reconsider. She’s got a beautiful husband and family … maybe it’s not for her,” Trump told reporters.
That’s a variation on the old mob style ultimatum, in this case with Trump telling her ‘That’s a nice future you can have in front of you. Shame if something were to ruin it’ with the last part being implied. As in if you don’t go quietly I’ll wreck not just your future but your husband’s too. So Katie Zacharia is GONE from Team Trump. The question now is who will replace her in the job, and whether Trump will once again go with his gut and pick the first blonde & blue gal he sees on Fox or let Susie Wiles present him with people who can actually do the job. By do the job I mean regurgitating Trump’s lies and bullshit without making themselves the whole story.
Sure, Leavitt and those before her got attention for their brazen defense of even the most indefensible crap Trump said and did but the attention was much more focused on him. It also just occurred to me that when Trump was forced to fire Mike Flynn at the beginning of his first term it was supposedly because Flynn had lied to him. We all know that was a load of crap. In this case however we know for a fact Zacharia lied to a lot of people about being a lawyer/attorney. That wouldn’t bother Trump at all since blatant lying is a prerequisite for being his Press Secretary.
No, in this case right as the news she’d lied about being a lawyer was blowing up she stood right there ten feet away with the cameras running and lied right to his ugly orange face about being a lawyer. That was out in the open for all to see and get on camera. It left Trump NO wiggle room to make dubious claims about having to check into it. She was toast right then and there. The only question was how long she’d last. It turned out to be less than I for one thought. In his second term he’s been far more reluctant to dump people.
It’s going to be fun watching and reading the commentary/editorializing on this fiasco in the next two or three days. In the end it will wind up cementing a five day tenure with Trump as a “Zacharia” – “Mooch” (Scaramucci) will have some company in the Spectacular Team Trump Flameouts dubious Hall of Fame. Or Hall of Shame. One last thought. Trump doesn’t get around so well but his anger at Zacharia for making him look so bad was probably such that at that final meeting where she agreed to go he actually walked her to the door. And SLAMMED it as hard as his tiny hand to ensure the doorknob hit her in the ass on the way out!
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