Remember Katie Zacharia? She served as Donald Trump’s White House press secretary for about five days before her embarrassing tenure ended abruptly nearly two weeks ago.

Zacharia has said very little in public since losing a job the president never should have given her, but this week, she spoke to the California Post about her extraordinarily unusual experience, pointing to, among other things, her lack of preparation. From the article:

Defending her rocky press room performance, Zacharia claimed she was given “only a few hours of actual briefing material” on the morning of her first press conference. She said former press secretaries, including Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Ari Fleischer, and Sean Spicer, reached out to express sympathy over what she called an inadequate “runway” to prepare.

In some ways, this helps capture what made the Zacharia story so notable in the first place.

To be sure, it was (and is) notable that the president chose an unqualified and conspiratorial commentator to serve as his chief spokesperson. But just below the surface, the way in which Trump hired and fired Zacharia reflects a spectacularly dysfunctional White House that struggles to complete basic tasks.

The president and his team, without any meaningful vetting process, chose a conspiracy theorist to be the public face of the White House, three weeks before nationwide elections, and then threw her into a difficult role without any meaningful preparation. Failure was both predictable and unavoidable.

But a competent West Wing would have known that in advance and taken steps to avoid a humiliating disaster.

“As the midterm elections draw near, the machine has begun to sputter,” The Atlantic’s Jon Chait noted after Zacharia’s ouster. “In the span of days, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced he would livestream a public execution, only for Trump to overrule him, [and] the administration fired Kimberly Guilfoyle, its ambassador to Greece, for engaging in corruption so overt, it embarrassed even the most corrupt administration in history. … In the midst of this multicar pileup, Zacharia briefly stepped forward as the administration’s stammering face.”

The fact that her failure came as a surprise to Team Trump speaks volumes about its competence — or lack thereof.

As for the former press secretary’s future, Trump told reporters two weeks ago that he expects her to continue to serve in his administration, “maybe a more pleasant form,” though that may not be altogether true.

“Zacharia teased that new career announcements are imminent, vowing to remain an outspoken Trump ally from outside the executive branch,” the California Post’s article added.

The post Katie Zacharia blames brief White House tenure on lack of prep appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.