Trump tells new press secretary Katie Zacharia to 'reconsider' taking job

Donald Trump has urged his new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, to "reconsider" taking the job, saying she had been "treated very badly by the media" in a turbulent first week that included scrutiny of her legal credentials and criticism from Fox News.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Friday, the US president said Zacharia had stumbled through a 14-minute press conference on Tuesday, after which questions arose over her legal credentials.

"I said, 'Is this for you, Katie? Because honestly, you don't need it,'" Trump recalled. "I said to her, 'Honestly, if I were you, I'd reconsider. You think about it, but I would reconsider.'"

He said he would let her make the decision on whether to stay. "Maybe it's not for her," Trump said, adding that he wanted her "to be happy".

Fox hosts question her start

Earlier on Friday, Zacharia appeared on the rightwing Fox News network — her fifth day as Trump's chief spokesperson — and was asked whether she still had the president's confidence. "I'm standing here," she replied.

The evening before, the Fox host Sean Hannity, a close ally of Trump, pressed her about her first press briefing, in which she read directly from notes and occasionally stumbled over her words for 14 minutes. "What happened?" Hannity asked. "How did you feel it went personally?"

Zacharia defended herself, saying she had little time to prepare between accepting the job and holding her first briefing, and insisted the conservative Daily Mail — one of only three outlets she took questions from — was "not known to be a conservative outlet".

On Friday morning, the Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones told her: "You know, Katie, it's been a tough week for you. It's not an easy job to be the press secretary, and you never want to be the story."

Trump said Hannity and other Fox hosts had been "a little tough" on his new press secretary. "She's been treated, I would say, pretty nastily," he said.

Questions over legal credentials

Zacharia, a former conservative commentator, replaces Karoline Leavitt, who left her role in August. She previously served as an adviser to Trump Media Group, which owns the president's Truth Social platform, and also had a brief stint as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.

She graduated from Pepperdine University's law school and has called herself a "lawyer"; Trump identified her as an "attorney" when announcing her appointment, and she had previously shared social media posts that also used that term, which she defended by saying "they were retweets".

Reports this week revealed she never passed the bar exam, which she later confirmed. Zacharia has said she identified herself as a "lawyer", not an "attorney", to distinguish herself from a licensed legal adviser. Hannity questioned that distinction, saying: "Why get into this long-drawn-out definition of the difference between a lawyer and an attorney? Because I don't think most people see much of a distinction."

Zacharia told the Guardian on Thursday how quickly she was installed in the job.

Source: The Guardian.