The Final 5: October 16, 2026

Come on, Homer. Stonebridge lost to that Quince Orchard team. Yes. But that Stonebridge team, I think, is slightly above that Oakton team. So I'm thinking that Stonebridge team needs to be above and needs to be at number five. Maybe next week that's where it will go down. We want to thank each and every one of you for coming out and watching the show tonight. Sydney is next. Take it away. Well, tonight on The Final Five, a career as a White House press secretary, almost as short-lived as her first briefing. President Trump has a new way to describe the war in Iran, and Congressman Andy Harris' showdown with a student reporter. This is The Final Five. Let's do this. Into The Final Five on this Friday night, and we start with a big change in staff at the White House involving someone who has quickly become one of the most discussed people in the Trump administration, Katie Sherin Zachariah. The 37th White House press secretary has officially ended her time in the role. She is alive and well, just out of a job, as you can see there, Monday to Friday. She started it on Monday and had only one briefing, lasting about 14 minutes. That briefing took center stage in politics this week with both critics and defenders of the administration panning her performance. But as recently as this morning, Zachariah made it sound like she intended to turn things around. Katie, do you, and it's a tough question, do you think you still have the confidence of the president? I'm standing here and I was able to travel with him through all of the midterm convention or excuse me, the midterm rallies. And I hope to be able to build the trust and confidence of everyone around me. Well, that outlook turned out to be short lived. President Trump wouldn't say he's firing her, but a senior White House official confirmed Zachariah is transitioning out of the role. That makes it sound like they're considering her for some other role in the administration. Maybe she could try her luck at White House counsel. after all she says she is a lawyer as a as a lawyer and a former corporate lawyer in China for three years i mean i am a lawyer i love to be able to break that down i'm a lawyer i'm a lawyer i went to Pepperdine Pepperdine Law i practiced corporate law in Beijing China you were an attorney there yes katie you're the attorney is this legal well i did gavin newsom has not cared about what's legal and was able to make a case because that's what we do as lawyers zachariah spent most of the week clarifying her legal credentials. She has a degree from Pepperdine, but never passed a bar exam. Legally, that means she is not an attorney. There is a disagreement on whether she can technically qualify as a lawyer. Either way, though, I don't think she's interested in White House counsel. She said so herself. Do you wish you would have disclosed to the president about the bar and not passing the bar? Yeah, well, Lawrence, those questions weren't asked. I'm being hired as White House press secretary and not White House counsel. The good news is Zachariah no longer has to worry about putting a positive spin on some of the heavy issues facing the world today, among them war. Concerns are growing over potential U.S. involvement as fighting in the Middle East escalates. Iran-backed Houthi rebels are increasing attacks across the Arabian Peninsula. President Trump had said the U.S. would not be involved in any more strikes until after the midterm elections. By the way, he came up with a new way to describe the war today. We have the highest stock market in history, and this is where the war, but it's not, it's just, it's a military exercise, okay? It's a military exercise. Meantime, President Trump is pausing a sweeping new package of sanctions against Russia, telling Congress the delay serves the U.S. national interest. The bipartisan measure was designed to rapidly cut off funding for Moscow's war in Ukraine. It comes just a week after the White House agreed to buy Russian diesel in a bid to tame soaring global energy prices. Just today, oil prices, they surged to their highest level in five months with a barrel of crude passing the one hundred and ten dollar mark. That's probably unwelcome news to a former Georgia congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene. She posted this video today. I'm tired of this, Grandpa. That's too damn bad. Too bad. That's a holes reference. If you're curious, great movie. But anyway, today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lashed out at President Trump over America's purchase of Russian diesel and the interruption of critical Starlink Internet service in Ukraine. And by lashed out, this is what we mean. And the war that he started in the Middle East is not going the way he wants it. Do you think you are being treated as a scapegoat for his own problems? This is my answer. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. President Trump and other members of the Trump administration have spent much of the week on the campaign trail, stumping for Republicans ahead of the midterms. Right now, Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and polls have suggested they are most at risk of losing the House. But President Trump was focusing on several states that are playing host to some competitive Senate races. One of them is Michigan, which is host to the highly competitive race between Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers. You deserve better than a little weasel who should shut his mouth and show a little gratitude to the country that gave him everything. In recent weeks, President Trump has accused El-Sayed of being a, quote, Muslim radical and a Muslim Brotherhood member, though there is no evidence for either claim. He was born in Michigan. He responded to Vance's comments. You know, it's funny, he called me, JD Vance called me a little weasel today. I'm like, no, no, no. What you're talking about is a Wolverine. You can take your Buckeye and go shove it somewhere else. Ohio. Here we might be Wildcats, we might be Spartans, we might be Wolverines, but we will never be Buckeyes. Today, President Trump was campaigning in Georgia for a Senate seat up for grabs there. That one's between incumbent Democratic Senator John Ossoff, who is facing a challenge from Republican Congressman Mike Collins. 18 days from now, the people of Georgia are going to defeat your weak, arrogant hate-filled radical left senator who is really I call him Pee-wee Herman, Pee-wee Herman looks like Pee-wee his name is John Ossoff highly overrated president Trump has been comparing Ossoff to Pee-wee Herman now for quite some time or at least we think he has been he seemed to make the comparison a couple months ago but it's possible he was talking about someone else I fought Ossoff before as you know and we won we had a great success against this guy He reminds me of Pinky Herman. Do you ever see Pee-wee Herman? President Trump has brought up appearances a lot in this race, including while discussing Ossoff's challenger, Mike Collins. I don't think he's a good looking man. I actually think Mike Collins is a good looking man. And he's all man. He's all man. I'm not sure about Ossoff. And I actually think that Rick Jackson's a very handsome, distinguished, beautiful looking guy. Kind words, but not as kind as the ones he had for Ohio Republican Senator John Hughes said this week. I don't do this with men very often. I started examining his body because I didn't know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass and I looked at the hole and then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He's got these like claws and I got it. You are a great athlete. OK. Former Press Secretary Katie Zachariah, a big topic for reporters behind the scenes this week as well. Niall Stanage reports on the White House for The Hill and is my guest when The Final Five comes back right after this. After less than a week on the job, Katie Zachariah is out as White House press secretary. She only spent 14 minutes in the briefing room, which is a whole lot less than my guest tonight. He is Niall Stanage, a White House columnist for The Hill, up late with me tonight on The Final Five. Thank you so much for joining us. Good to be with you, Sydney. So, Niall, you have spent so much time in that briefing room. I'm curious, when you watched that briefing on Monday, did you expect we would be here quite so early? I did not. No, I didn't think it was a good briefing. To be clear, I wasn't in the room for that briefing. It was a colleague's turn in our seat. But when I watched it back, I almost felt sorry for Katie Zachariah because it was so bad. Now, having said that, President Trump is famously reluctant to bow to public pressure, certainly very reluctant to bow to media criticism. So it was somewhat surprising that she only lasted five days. You and I were talking in the break about her appearance on Fox News last night with Sean Hannity. I'm curious what you made of that. I know there's been quite a debate online, some people wondering, did they go trying to salvage her job and send her for that reason? Or did they send her there kind of expecting she might bomb and using that to kind of set her up to save the day. It was a curious episode in this whole drama. One of the things that struck me was that Sean Hannity was tougher than one would necessarily expect him to be to a key member of the Trump White House. I mean, he is famously friendly with Trump and that is often reflected in the coverage. So he was pretty rigorous with Katie Zachary and she didn't perform well, in my view. That is more difficult, I think, to excuse than first day nerves in the briefing room, which is, you know, it's a tough job, but it was another poor performance. And then again, this morning on Fox, I think those probably sealed her fate. There are reports that the president more or less went broke with this hire, that he made it very quickly, that he reportedly did not consult Susie Wiles. I'm curious, what is your understanding or do you have a sense at all about sort of what this has done to the mood around senior staff? Obviously, with the midterms now literally days away this this is not a good time to have a distraction so to speak no it's certainly not and we have had several of those distractions recently some return to the kind of feuding that we saw in the first trump term but has been largely absent this time around to your point about the midterms you do not if you're a white house with a president with low approval ratings and polls predicting that the opposition party is going to make gains you do not want to be wasting days or hours, for that matter, on distracting or negative stories. This was a situation where the White House got into a mess of its own making, in a sense. And that is a problem because they don't have this kind of margin for error with the midterms just around the corner. The president appears very clearly quite fond of this woman. I'm curious what you made of his remarks this morning as he was departing the White House, because, you know, that exchange was just really moments before we learned she'd been ousted. He seemed very supportive of her still. He had said, you know, folks are being unfair to her in the media. Do you expect, as there's been some chatter, that she might stay in the administration in some sort of less visible role? I find that difficult to believe, but I'm not completely ruling it out. I think what was notable to me about those remarks that the president made was once he had said publicly that if he were her, he would reconsider, it was untenable for her to stay at that point so once he had made those remarks it was not then a big surprise to me to learn later today that she was out on a human level I think for anyone to experience a humiliation at that degree I would think she might return to private life at least for a while we have seen famously in the case of Anthony Scaramucci somebody who had a very short, very stormy tenure. It was pretty humiliating for him when he was ousted, but he is, you know, has returned as a presence on the public scene. I'm quite sure he said online earlier, by the way, you know, a message to Katie, be grateful and enjoy your private life. Last question for you before you go. Any sense that you have about who might be on this short list? Because they're going to need to find a press secretary, presumably at some point. You would think so, but I am cautious because nobody expected Katie Zachariah to be named this time around. I suppose one name that keeps coming up again and again is Scott Jennings, the political commentator. He is said to be someone favoured by Susie Wiles, who you mentioned, the White House Chief of Staff, and obviously, by virtue of his very frequent TV appearances, is used to defending President Trump, often in circumstances where there are other people on the same panels being very critical. So Jennings is used to that kind of hand-to-hand verbal combat and that might come in handy. Well, there is a lot to watch and I know you will be panels being very critical. Scott Jennings used to that kind of hand-to-hand verbal combat and that might come in handy. Well, there is a lot to watch and I know you will be in the briefing room watching closely. We'll be sure to have you back on. There's much more to develop in the coming days. Now, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you. We appreciate it. The Final Five is back right after this. so you do not have my permission to record if you record we will refer you to the prosecutor, everyone in here is but you are not allowed to, we are in a two-party state, you are not allowed to take her camera you're gonna take her camera, she is violating the law, in fact get an officer in here, she's violating the law on two-party two-party recording the uh officers, we had an officer how was Maryland Congressman Andy Harris incorrectly telling a student reporter earlier this week. She was illegally recording him. Harris was citing Maryland's two-party consent law, which generally applies to conversations with a reasonable expectation of privacy, like a phone call. Jim Locke spoke with the Washington Sun's Stephen Newcomb last night about the reaction to the situation, but technical difficulties cut it short. Here's that interview in full. Needless to say, the reaction from Andy Harris after that town hall quite varied over the last couple of days. Let's talk about that and more with Stephen Newcomb from the Washington Sun, who's up with me tonight once again on The Final Five. Welcome back to the show. Good to see you. Thanks for having me, Jim. Okay. We've seen this video, and we can look at it from a couple different angles. I think those of us in the media, those of us who have been through that conversation with people before about what's public and what's private and when you can record and when you can't, we've been down that path before. I think what was striking was just in that moment, it wasn't like he was lashing out at somebody from CNN or MSNBC. This was a reporter from the Statehouse News Service. Yeah, it's a student reporter from an organization that covers Congress. It covers Annapolis, the state house in Maryland as well for the University of Maryland. So, yeah, and then sort of, you know, relatively inexperienced reporter who really stood her ground really well, knew the setting and the law much more authoritatively than it turns out the congressman does. So, yeah, I mean, it's pretty outstanding that this was a student that happened to be on the receiving end of this. Have we learned any reason why he targeted her and what his objections were to her presence there? I mean, not beyond sort of what's on video. We know that it seems like he didn't like the question about the war in Iran. I think that his objection, at least publicly, what he says in that video is that he was not giving her consent to record the sort of press scrum that he had going on. It wasn't a press conference, probably a press scrum, because he did not give consent. I don't know if it was because he didn't like the question. But obviously, some folks stepped in, tried to tell the congressman that this is a public setting, this is not a private setting. Maryland's law only applies to private conversations. And eventually, Congressman Harris just stormed out. Yeah, and this is something that I personally, we had to learn the difference because when the station moved from DC into Maryland, when we were doing all these interviews out of Maryland, I mean, that opened up a whole new slew of considerations that we have to undergo when we embark on interviews and we do interviews with people. Look, considering the setting, considering this was happening out in Queen Anne's County, this is an area that, it's the Republican district in Maryland right now. uh andy harris has been popular among voters there he's popular among national republicans as chairman of the freedom caucus have you picked up on any any uh any backlash anything that any sort of fallout for him or is this just sort of another day in covering politics in 2026 well yeah being it's my it's my my hometown district so i know a little bit about the area um i think that you know congressman harris he's he's an eight-term incumbent it is maryland's only Republican district. I think he's safe this election year. I think the interaction sort of underscores just the environment. I mean, again, this is an eight-term incumbent who has done countless town halls, countless debates, countless events. for the reaction to be different this time around in this election, I think it sort of just shows how the environment politically for Republicans is just drastically different than it even was maybe under Trump 1.0 in this midterm season. Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that about his availability for these sort of forums because he did a debate. He had candidate forums before. He's not somebody who's necessarily ducked these opportunities. So there have been sufficient opportunities for him to go before the voters, before the public, before the media. He's not somebody who's been ducking cameras like we've seen other politicians do throughout the years. Yeah, absolutely not. And I would say that this is an important sort of exercise for the congressman if he wants to sort of continue serving. Because yes, he has this Republican district right now. But as you know, there's a memorandum in front of voters this November for them to sort of clear the way for Democrats to redistrict the state and make it even more difficult for Congressman Harris to remain the only Republican in the Democratic delegation. They're going to do what they can to make it as sort of competitive as possible. So these challenges from Democratic challengers are going to be more fierce if that ballot measure passes and if Democrats can redo the map in Maryland. And this is something that I think Congressman Harris or any Republican that would run in that district would need to get used to. So with your familiarity with that district, when I've seen over the last 24 hours, Democratic candidates, Democratic lawmakers, Jamie Raskin, for one of them, put out statements propping up the Democrat Andy Schwartz, and saying this is our opportunity that they somehow smell the proverbial blood in the water. That seems to be, if you look at his history here, it's wishful thinking. It is wishful thinking. Again, like I said, I think he's safe this cycle. It's such a R plus territory. It's Trump country, it really is in a lot of ways. And Andy Harris, again, man seeking his ninth term. People know him. They know his name on the ballot. They know him all over the district. But again, if the map changes after this year, after this midterm, that could change pretty drastically for Congressman Harris. Many more conversations to have about that as election day nears. Stephen Newcomb from The Sun, good to see you, man. Thanks, buddy. Back after this. Fox News contributor Kennedy seems like she finally got something off of her chest today. Kennedy used to work at Fox with now ousted ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a Daily Mail column. This nonsense, it is so tiring. But the way that we move past this is by not just coming together for no reason, not even just coming together because it's nice, although it is, and morally right, which it also is, but also because there is no way ever that we are going to guarantee health care for every American unless we come across our differences and vote for it, that we are going to raise our wages and make the minimum wage a living wage and all of our wages higher unless we come together across our differences and not to spite them, but to celebrate them, to embrace them, and to co-exist together. Because this is the scam that Donald Trump, Mike Rogers, and many of these other folks are trying to peddle. They want you to think that they can deliver a better quality of life just for some.