'Trump will be embarrassed': Is it already over for Katie Zacharia?

Which brings us to Katie Zakaria. Zakaria, I'm sorry, Zakaria. I'm not sure that we're going to need to spend very much time remembering her name because I've got a feeling she may not be longed for this world. However, yes, so Katie Zakaria is the new White House press secretary. At least she's still the White House press secretary. After a quite extraordinary debut yesterday, she made the decision, I think foolishly, to conduct her first White House press briefing just a matter of 96 hours after President Trump unveiled her. She clearly hadn't been briefed, prepared in any way for all of this. So what? And as she proved yesterday, the moment she started moving her lips, she's not up to the job. Good morning. I am so honoured to work for President Trump and the American people as the new White House press secretary. I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time. So she's got a dream job, a coveted position on the public taxpayer-funded payroll. What was she going to do with it? Well, in the first moments of that press briefing, which lasted fully 13 minutes before she threw in the towel, she broke the law. She breached the Hatch Act, which is American law that bans federal government employees from openly acting as mouthpieces for political campaigns. Her predecessor, Caroline Leavitt, was very careful. I would argue more careful about observing the Hatch Act than some of the people who stood behind the podium during Joe Biden's presidency. But listen to what Zakaria said yesterday, clearly acting as a political operative from behind that podium. President Trump delivered another blockbuster rally from his stops in Tennessee, New York, Texas and Nebraska. He is an energetic president. Attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hardworking Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump. and republicans and republicans even though trump's name's not on the ballot the white house of course has argued he is on the ballot but the minute she started talking about president trump and the republicans there will be an argument that that is a breach of the hatch act she took three questions all of them from reliable pro-trump organizations breitbart news the daily mail and fox news who's why you put the man on that list well i think that yes i mean i mean Yeah, I think that she knew that she wasn't going to get much of a bouncer from the mail, although they did ask her about the ambassador to Greece. Well, we'll come to that in a minute. A columnist who repeatedly reveals that he wishes Donald Trump was governing this country. So there you go. Probably fair. So and then Pete Doocy, who's the White House correspondent for Fox News. He's the one who was confident enough to try and ask her a bit of a bouncer. I want to ask you a policy question. Has the U.S. stopped sharing intel with Ukraine? I'll have to get back to you on that. And then the mask later in this appearance completely slipped. The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable. So my president, excuse me, my husband, that's a good one. My husband is out here. Now, she may well have an opportunity to spend more time with her family pretty soon because it was a disastrous 13 minutes behind that podium. And let me just underscore where she comes from ideologically. This woman is a QAnon, make America great again, dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist. She was most recently the kind of the gatekeeper for Rick Grenell, the former US ambassador to Germany, the former acting director of national intelligence, the man who's been presiding over the complete cataclysm at the Kennedy Center on Donald Trump's watch. She has, on social media, amplified views and expressed views that say Democratic Party leaders are paedophiles. Members of the Hollywood elite, they're even worse. They're paedophile cannibals. Michelle Obama is really a man. She's done that one, has she? She's amplified that one. Transgender assailants are responsible for America's ongoing mass gun violence. she's claimed that 8 out of 10 women had a miscarriage after taking the Covid vaccine 8 out of 10 obviously completely untrue and that America's most used abortion pill contains the same chemicals that were used in the Nazi gas chambers it does not I also see that she has recently sat on the board of an organisation that believes that women who have abortions should be executed publicly in the United States This woman is now receiving American taxpayer dollars as her salary to take the position of White House press secretary of the 37 that we've had. She is far and away the least qualified and absolutely the least intellectually qualified to do this particular job. And I've got a feeling we're probably not going to see a lot more of her. Because Trump will be embarrassed by association, which means he has to disappear. And also the appointment was made, we now know, without any consultation with his chief of staff, Susie Wiles. This was another one of these things that happens when she's away. He makes decisions, announces them. I mean, this is a this is I knew this was going to go wrong long before. I mean, as soon as he made the announcement, I've had I've had one set of dealings with Katie Zakaria in the past. You know exactly where she's coming from ideologically. and you know you could have seen from space that this was going to be a catastrophe yesterday, and indeed it was. Speaking of which, presumably she would also have been agitating for the full release of the Epstein files at one point. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. And has now gone completely silent about that. You mentioned one ambassador. We should probably talk about another, the former ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who stands accused of all manner of financial impropriety, allegations that she furiously denies. Donald Trump, you know, we give him quite a hard time. I thought he was very touching, the way he talked about her back in March. The U.S. ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, a person I know very, very well. She's an inspiration to a lot of people, especially if you happen to be Greek. Kimberley. Kimberley. Kimberley. Now, Kimberley Guilfoyle has been my friend for a long time. I love calling her Kimberley. That's my little pet name, right? But you are the greatest. and I heard they love you over there. I hope you come back here in 12 years or whatever the term is. Come on up here, Kim. Stay alongside of us. Oh, that's sweet. Nice, isn't it? She's a former fiancé of one of his. Yes, Donald Trump Jr. One of the Fredos. Fiancé. Yeah, that's nice. Former husband, by the way, former wife, by the way, of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. She's right in the room where it happens. And he clearly knows her extremely, extremely well. I wonder what could possibly happen next. I'm not surprised for you to learn about these allegations. No, she wasn't a member of my family. She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago, but she wasn't. No, she went to Greece. She was doing a good job, but we didn't like what we were reading. Well, that doesn't matter, does it? No. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't. Once again, we're back to the doesn't, it doesn't. I mean, she's a former Fox News presenter. Naturally. Absolutely now dogged by allegations of financial impropriety. The Wall Street Journal, citing text messages, said that she asked a Trump donor and supporter to pay a $100,000 credit card bill just before her confirmation hearing, promising him access to administration officials. At one point, there was talk of her being paid by this individual a million dollars if she could get him onto Tucker Carlson's podcast. She was unable to do that. There are written text messages in which she is urging him to move their communications to an encrypted app because she worries that his loose lips and the paper trail that he's leaving in their communications are going to cause her problems. She'd been traveling all over the place in a private jet. She had been taking a private Greek businessman to all manner of meetings. The staff at the embassy, the people in the business meetings, thought he was embassy staff. They thought that he was embassy staff because they were so joined at the hip. Anyway, they finally bailed on her. One person who comes out looking a little damaged by this is Marco Rubio. Because remember, he was in Greece last week making that big speech that was going to launch his presidential aspirations. All got upended by this Wall Street Journal reporting about Ambassador Guilfoyle. And then he blew up at the press when they started asking him questions about it. This is what happens when they leave the compound, isn't it? When they find themselves overseas or even getting off Air Force One is that they just have to actually face some questions from members of the media who aren't there just to sort of tickle their toes. Good Lord. I mean, again, it's worth... I haven't heard the phrase Trump derangement syndrome for a while, Simon, have you? I'm sure I have, actually. I mean, I still get occasional people accusing me of it. I'm getting Eleanor derangement syndrome. I'm five minutes late for the news. with what was it she said with something in excitement with energy and excitement was that her reading the autocue i think it was wasn't it look i i think i think so sheila i mean i think it's fair to say there has been a long story in a checkered history of White House press secretaries and and donald trump going all the way back listeners and viewers will remember to those early days back in 2017 january 2017 with sean spicer telling the whole world that black was white and white was black and a crowd size was far bigger than we could see with our our own eyes and i think with miss um zachariah this is the latest iteration of this and in some ways she is unfortunate because of course she followed caroline levitt and Caroline Leavitt um for all of her many demerits and faults she was without doubt one of the most effective propagandists that the Western world has ever seen she was willing with complete fluency and complete cogency and keep complete vitriol and sometimes with complete venom to go out every day and go toe-to-toe into the boxing ring is how she saw it with the White House press corps and say exactly what Donald Trump wanted them to say and did so with in her own way aplomb and i think Ms Zachariah yesterday showed that in her own indomitable way Miss Leavitt was quite a tough act to follow yeah i mean she i'm talking about Leavitt now here when i talk about this she was clearly intelligent this girl it might have been a woman might have been first day nerves but you get the feeling it wasn't you get the feeling that what you had here was a Donald Trump super fan and that was her main qualification well indeed she and this is what i mean and you can see the slow progression here of of of this role look for But for British listeners and viewers, you know, we don't have an equivalent in this country of the White House press secretary. But of course, in the United States politics, it's a very well-established institution going back in terms of public record or public briefings going all the way back to the Eisenhower administration. They are the second most well-known face of any particular administration at any given time, second only to the president themselves. Typically, historically, they were campaign professionals, communication professionals, someone who had worked with the president's incumbent party sometimes the incumbent president for a long time you know that when they spoke they could speak with authority um on behalf of of the president under Donald Trump that has changed and they've become it would have been unthinkable i think under any previous administration to have someone like Ms. Zakaria in that role because what we're talking about in some ways trump has done her a huge disservice here because he's elevated her she's not a campaign professional she's not a party operative she's not a communications professional she's someone with an apparently non-existent law degree to be confirmed whose basic contribution or basic qualification for the job was that she recycled trump talking points on fox news and in trump's own way i suppose we have to be realistic looked the part while she was doing it and i think that was exposed yesterday when i mean she only took three questions of course all of which from conservative you know generally speaking pro-trump outlets and there was only one serious one which didn't involve her day or how she intended intended to marry her new responsibilities with looking after her kids birthday parties it was a story which has been on the top of the every newspaper and top of the headlines in washington over the course of the past few days which is have the americans stopped sharing intelligence with the ukrainians obviously a key key question and one of genuinely international geostrategic significance absolutely and as Zakaria said well i'll have to get back to you um which probably tells you something in terms of you know the most predictable question possible with only three questions given and i think you know she's not going to be able to keep doing that and retain any credibility in the weeks ahead and the the the sort of the race is on now to see whether she lasts longer than Scaramucci well I think hasn't Scaramucci said that she's currently on one eleventh of a full Scaramucci but I think this is what I mean like look this is what you're going on I actually think she might well last much longer than you think because of course look you can forgive first day nerves and let's be a bit more let's be trying I actually warned to her the way she handled calling her husband the president yeah that was quite funny that's easily done I agree it was quite charming in its own way you can sort of see how it happens it must be big moment for her and i believe her when she says that she genuinely feels like honor and a privilege to be serving a president that she clearly adores you know lots of people find that mysterious because it's Trump but you know he does inspire in every sense a lot of people so i think that's fine but i think what's more revealing is how much of the briefing was devoted to praising Donald Trump how little as would you once have been the case would have been about what his government is doing she told us she could tell us about his rally crowds um she couldn't tell us on whether she was america was sharing intelligence with Ukraine she had to go away and check that that is a very consequential gap right the truth is this has always been the case under the Trump and it's got worse and worse under the Trump different Trump administrations the White House press secretary historically had to speak for the president under Trump White House press secretaries speaker are more comfortable speaking to the president that's their job they have a constituency of one it's not the press pleasing him the country it's always been a funny job because you know you kind of have to do all three historically you've got to speak to the press honestly but still give the administration's obvious point of view and spin and represent the president you've got to kind of like square that circle while retaining trust on all sides under the Trump administration it's been about a constituency and an audience of one which is how much you prostrate yourself every day saying things that aren't true just to make the realities inside the president's head the unrealities inside the president's head for a small brief glistening moment real at least to him