By many accounts, Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, had a humiliating first day on the job. I was certainly not expecting what happened.
For most people in ordinary jobs, that first day at work can be awkward and nerve-racking as hell. The U.S. president’s press secretary, however, is no ordinary job. The appointee is expected to hit the ground running, and professionalism is mandatory. In Trump’s case, that meant starting the lie count with aplomb.
Katie, however, couldn’t read her notes fluently and seemed overwhelmed by the occasion. She spent the first eight minutes of her roughly 15-minute stint at the podium reading haltingly from a prepared speech. She then took only three questions from the regime-friendly press before fleeing to join Trump on the White House lawn as he prepared to depart on Marine One.
In the process, Zacharia may have also opened up two very maggoty cans of worms. First, she may have violated the Hatch Act by promoting a Republican political campaign in her speech. Second, when a reporter on the White House lawn pressed her about where she passed the bar exam to validate her claimed status as a lawyer, she vaguely replied that she had moved to China. Zacharia is now facing scrutiny from the State Bar of California after Campaign for Accountability, a nonpartisan watchdog group, filed a complaint.
Meanwhile, that eight-minute introduction in which she repeatedly and openly fawned over Trump may ultimately reveal her primary job description. Katie Zacharia appears to have been appointed as Trump’s official praise-singer.
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