White House spokeswoman Katie Zacharia 'let go' from role, official says

Dawn · 16/10/2026، 6:48:46 PM

White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was “let go” from the role, an official said on Friday, after US President Donald Trump said he had told her to reconsider the job following public scrutiny. “I told her: ‘I think you’re better off being happy, and I’m not sure you can ever be happy in this stuff.’ There’s nothing easy about this stuff,” Trump told reporters. He added: “I said to her honestly, ‘If I were you, I’d reconsider … think about it. But I would reconsider.’” Fox News , citing a White House official, later reported that Zacharia was “transitioning” out of the role of press secretary. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Thursday, Zacharia acknowledged that she had failed the bar exam, a prerequisite for practising law in the United States. Zacharia has described herself as a lawyer during television appearances and on social media, and listed herself as general counsel of a California-based conservative nonprofit. But the legal credentials of the press secretary, who President Donald Trump appointed last week, were called into question after she gave an inconclusive answer about where she had passed the bar exam. The 41-year-old graduated from Pepperdine University’s law school in 2011, but obtaining a law degree does not automatically qualify someone to practice law. In a Fox News interview on Thursday, host Sean Hannity asked Zacharia: “You took the bar exam, but you didn’t pass the bar exam, correct?” “Yes,” she responded. In a separate interview with conservative media outlet Real America’s Voice on Thursday, Zacharia said she had registered to take the bar exam but was “distracted and overwhelmed” by plans to move to China with her husband. “The results are somewhat inconsequential because I knew I wouldn’t need the bar in China,” she said. Foreign nationals cannot sit China’s bar exam, although they can undertake certain legal work at Chinese law firms. Hannity later asked Zacharia if she had ever taken the