At her inaugural briefing as President Donald Trump’s new press secretary Tuesday morning, Katie Zacharia answered a handful of questions. But she raised many more.
Among them: Why all the unnatural pauses while reading out loud from a binder? What’s with the weird hand gesture where she taps her fingertips together? Is she the first press secretary in history to publicly mix up the president with their own spouse? Why did she flee the briefing room after just 14 minutes, only eight of them spent taking questions?
Zacharia appears to have extensive experience at being unqualified for her job. According to the investigative journalism newsletter Popular Information, she has repeatedly described herself as a lawyer despite there being no evidence she ever passed the bar exam. (Later today, when asked which state she passed the bar in, Zacharia replied, “When I moved to China.” I have no idea what that means.) Yet those of us with low expectations were shocked by how poorly she performed.
It’s a mistake to ask whether Trump thinks his new press secretary is qualified or merely sycophantic. For Trump, sycophancy is a form of qualification.
Conservative media was less harsh, but only slightly. “She’s emphasizing the wrong words when she’s communicating what she has to say,” said a body-language expert quoted in the New York Post. “And she needs some basic training.”
In a way, I can empathize. I started working in the Obama White House when I was 24. I needed some basic training, too. But I was hired for a junior role, while press secretary is one of the White House’s most senior positions.
We can argue about whether promoting Trump’s agenda is helpful or harmful to the American people, or whether appointing someone who spread Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories to speak on the administration’s behalf is a good idea. One thing I suspect nearly all Americans agree on, however, is this: If you’re going to serve as the press secretary for the White House, you shouldn’t be bad at the most basic parts of your job.
Trump used to make exactly that point. In 2015, he promised that if he were elected president, he would “surround myself only with the best and most serious people.” It would be easy to conclude that — like two-dollar-a-gallon gas or no new wars in the Middle East — Trump’s pledge to hire the best people is just another broken promise.
But the truth might be more complicated — and in a way, more dangerous for the country.
Perhaps the problem isn’t that Trump and MAGA don’t really care about meritocracy. It’s that they have a different definition of merit than the rest of us do. Just look at the president’s statement announcing Zacharia’s hiring as press secretary. He pointed to her “unblemished record of support” and the fact that she has “been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning.” He ended his statement on Truth Social, whose parent company Zacharia once advised, by saying, “She is, likewise, a devoted fan and member of MAGA!”
These are not what most of us would consider to be professional qualifications.
I assume the New York Giants appreciate their biggest fans. So, I’m sure, does Marvel Studios or the members of the K-pop group BTS. But that doesn’t mean they’re invited to play quarterback, star as Peter Parker in the next Spider-Man or perform “Swim” on the next world tour.
Even Trump’s strongest supporters don’t make hiring decisions this way. Elon Musk clearly gets an ego boost from his legion of social media groupies. But when he hires for his companies or political operations, he tends to choose people he thinks will be effective, not just supportive.
When the president makes it clear that his staff members’ most important job is soothing his fragile ego, it’s no surprise that they drop the ball in other areas, such as figuring out how to bring down prices or avoid a deadly and expensive quagmire in the Middle East.
Trumpworld functions differently. It’s a mistake to ask whether Trump thinks his new press secretary is qualified or merely sycophantic. For Trump, sycophancy is a form of qualification.
At times, the anti-meritocracy in the White House has worked out well for the president‘s opponents. Trump’s own team concluded that former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s public appearances helped sink the president’s approval ratings on immigration. The weaponization of federal law enforcement against the president’s enemies is terrifying — which makes it a form of relief that FBI Director Kash Patel spends at least some of his time chugging beers with hockey players when he could beleading politicized investigations instead.
But competence matters. And incompetence at the highest levels of government hurts all Americans, regardless of who they vote for. When the president makes it clear that his staff members’ most important job is soothing his fragile ego, it’s no surprise that they drop the ball in other areas, such as figuring out how to bring down prices or avoid a deadly and expensive quagmire in the Middle East.
Rallying in Ohio, Trump admitted that his public relations could use some work. But his real problem runs far deeper than that. Ironically, it’s one that MAGA has spent an enormous amount of time warning us about: the possibility that the government will hire people based on their identity, without regard to their ability to do the job.
“DEI is dead at DoD,” said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in one of his earliest speeches. “We’re building a merit-based culture that promotes and rewards individual initiative, excellence and hard work.”
But as Zacharia’s embarrassing first briefing demonstrates yet again, DEI, as the Trump administration itself defines it, isn’t dead. It’s flourishing beyond anything any Democratic administration has ever attempted. All that’s changed is the identity being promoted. In the Trump White House, you don’t get hired because you’re the most qualified. You get hired because you’re the most MAGA.
The results of this approach are in — and they’re exactly what Trump and his allies spent years promising they would avoid.
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