Reacting to Katie Zachariah’s Exit After Just Five Days

A sudden shakeup in the White House. The new press secretary, Katie Zachariah, is out and leaving the role after just five days on the job. President Trump announced her appointment October 9th. Her first briefing lasted just 14 minutes with only three questions. Joining me to discuss this is Virginia Tech professor and director of graduate studies, Dr. Casey Myers. Casey, thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me. Let's get started. Everyone is talking about this today. How did everything unravel so quickly? Well, I think the big issue here is that she became the story. So her performance at the first press conference was very short. It was overly scripted. And then there was all the swirling controversy around her legal background and lack of a bar license and questions around holding herself out as an attorney. And so what ended up happening is, is that that really created a crisis for the administration. And I think ultimately led to her departure after widespread criticism. Even so, President Trump says he thinks that she's been treated unfairly by the media. But as you mentioned, her qualifications and also that first press briefing came under scrutiny. How much did that contribute to this termination? Well, every press secretary is the face of the administration's relations with the media. And the media was not taking her seriously in light of some of this performance and some of these questions around her qualifications. but moreover she was becoming the story rather than relaying the news to the media and that creates a problem in terms of being able to communicate the White House's agenda and president Trump's initiatives and so i think that kind of created an environment where long term she was not going to be able to stay in the role and i think the white house recognized that in case you bring up a good point in journalism even the unwritten rule is never become the story and it seems that, as you mentioned, she became this story and so much more. Absolutely. And this was something that was covered worldwide. And of course, we're in a time when there are a lot of serious stories like with the war in Iran and in Ukraine and with the economy. And so in that type of situation, the White House, particularly in a high stakes midterm election here, they're trying to get their narrative out and they're trying to control the message. And then when you have a press secretary becoming the story that loses all control of the message and ultimately places scrutiny on them that they ultimately did not want. By many accounts, we can all agree Caroline Leavitt is a tough act to follow. What does this say, though, about the vetting process inside the Trump administration, especially for someone in such a high profile role? Well, it shows just how important this role can be. But it also highlights an issue, I think, about press secretaries. Press secretaries typically have a close personal relationship with the president. They're part of the inner circle. And the idea is, is that they're able to communicate on behalf of the president because they know what he thinks. They had that relationship. And Leavitt, it seems, had that type of relationship with President Trump where she was part of the conversation. And that raised some questions, too, about whether or not the press secretary was someone that actually knew the information from firsthand or was just reading from a script. And ultimately, I think that that was something that the media just was very critical of. To be continued, Dr. Casey Meyer is from Virginia Tech. Thank you so much for your insight.