On Tuesday afternoon, after Katie Zacharia’s disastrous first briefing as White House press secretary, a White House official told MS NOW, “She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record,” set, of course, by Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Donald Trump’s communications director for 11 days in 2017.

Three days later, she did what few thought possible by breaking that record. As a truly brutal first week neared its end, MS NOW reported:

After a turbulent five days in the role, Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary, two White House officials familiar with her departure told MS NOW on Friday.

The details — whether Zacharia voluntarily left her role or was directly fired — are still unclear. On Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he asked Zacharia to “reconsider” her role.

After Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, thus elevating Gerald Ford to the presidency, the Michigan Republican needed a new White House team. Ford tapped Jerald terHorst, a veteran journalist, to be the press secretary, and he seemed like a perfectly sensible choice.

The arrangement, however, did not last. A month into Ford’s tenure, the new president issued a controversial pardon to Nixon, and terHorst, unwilling to defend the decision, resigned. His tenure — just 31 days — was the shortest of any White House press secretary ever.

A half-century later, Zacharia’s time in the office lasted roughly one-sixth the length of terHorst’s tenure.

During a brief Q&A with reporters just outside the White House on Friday afternoon, the president made it sound as if he were doing his newly minted press secretary a favor.

“It’s not an easy job, and I think she was really treated very unfairly,” Trump said, adding, “I told her, ‘I think you’re better off being happy, and I’m not sure you can ever be happy in this job.’”

Asked whether Zacharia would continue to serve in his administration, the Republican said, “Yeah. In some form — but maybe a more pleasant form.”

The development marks a stunning turn of events, including the exposure of Zacharia’s extensive record of peddling unhinged conspiratorial nonsense via social media, her misleading claims about her legal credentials, her work at a business that she described as “sort of a pyramid scheme” and her concession that she tried and failed to pass the California Bar Exam.

The president is already trying to blame this remarkable fiasco on the news organizations that reported accurate information, but as the dust settles, Trump and his team should at least try to consider a few lessons.

First, meritocracies are good, and hiring random people because the president saw them on television is bad.

Second, some routine vetting of prominent White House officials is a standard and responsible move.

And third, picking an unqualified press secretary three weeks before nationwide elections, having her move across the country and then throwing her into a difficult role without any meaningful preparation is a recipe for inevitable failure.

Put another way, there’s a fair amount of blame to go around for this humiliating debacle, which has managed to make the entire White House appear even more incompetent.

The post As Katie Zacharia’s tenure ends after just 5 days, here are some lessons for Team Trump appeared first on MS NOW.

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From MS Now.