Will Trump's new press secretary last the week? | The News Agents USA

It turns out that reading from a briefing document is actually quite hard. The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable. So my president, excuse me, my husband. Oh, you know, Katie stumbled a bit because she hasn't got the propaganda kind of flowing from her fingernails just yet. She stumbled a bit because she didn't know the lies quite well enough. And Caroline Leavitt lied continuously and she never got fired because her lying was so good. This is what Donald Trump went to bed thinking about. I don't care if he said she did excellent, which is what he said. Donald Trump will not be able to stand the coverage. It feels like I'm falling apart. The News Agency USA is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. This is a global production. He had a historic one-day war and now we have a booming economy and a great relationship with Venezuela. Welcome to the world of Katie Zakaria, the new White House press secretary unveiled yesterday and already a social media superstar because people can't get enough of her trying to read out loud. She has possibly the hardest job in Washington, but many are already asking if she'll last the week. Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Maitlis. And it's Miles. And Katie Zakaria was unveiled as the new kind of, I mean, honestly, you think there is a production line of White House press secretaries because they all sort of look a bit like Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka. And you think, is that part of the job description? You've just got to look like one of the Trump daughters to get the job. Anyway, there she was at the podium in the White House briefing room. And it turns out that reading from a briefing document is actually quite hard. And she fumbled over the words and it all became a bit of a joke on social media. It's worth just having a little listen to her taking control of the White House press corps Good morning. I am so honored 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. I'm looking forward to working with each of you as well. especially as we are in the middle of the midterm blitz with energy and excitement never seen before in the history of midterms thanks to president trump when i was a kid there was this american toy called the talk-up doll do you remember the talk-up doll i didn't know okay so this on the talk-up doll you pulled the head on this elastic string and when it bounced back it would say oh there goes my butt and then you pulled it again it was saying it feels like i'm falling apart Anyway, that was what Katie Zakaria brought to mind a little bit yesterday, because the sort of it feels like it's falling apart was evidenced quite quickly. Normally, you would go into a press briefing and the press have come from all over Washington and all over the world, quite frankly. And they're expecting you to deliver a session that lasts about 45, you know, 60 minutes. Maybe you could get questions on anything. It is. That's why I said it's the hardest job in Washington. Right. You could get somebody asking you about the Kurds. You get somebody asking you about ethanol subsidies. You can get somebody asking you about Taiwan. And you have to know exactly where the president's head is on any of these, because you can start wars. You can move markets. If you say the wrong things, it's it's really bad. But that's why it should be a job that takes absolutely hours to prep. You know, you should be going into this thinking, I've got to know my brief on every single thing. And so I guess somebody sent her in there and didn't really care what happened. And after three questions, she shuts her binder and she heads out. Yeah, it lasted precisely 14 minutes. Yeah. And she's asked a policy question, you know, straight up about intelligence sharing on Ukraine. And she she kind of has to say she doesn't know. I mean, you know, she doesn't know. So she says she doesn't know. Yes. But it's worth listening to, because frankly, what is the I mean, it's such a kind of main. It's not a question about what's happening to the Kurds in Erbil in northern Iraq. It's about one of the topics du jour that is occupying every bit of mental headspace. And she had absolutely no frigging idea. And this is the question and answer. 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. That was that. John, I have to say that um you're gonna hear me say this a lot this whole press briefing was so so thick with symbolism and irony that it's tough to know even where to start i mean we had said since the first Trump administration that I quit that a second Trump administration was going to involve the president scraping the bottom of the barrel finding only people whose qualifications involved loyalty and adoration for him and had little to nothing to do with policy and experience and real qualifications. And in a lot of ways, critics, myself included, are seeing this press briefing as the epitome of the thing that people warned about for a number of years. And of course, it wasn't just that she seemed unprepared to answer the questions and confused or uncertain about the policy issues there were already those issues about her background coming up but before we get to that i just want to say one thing because it was like a blooper every five seconds and there was this awkward moment where she conflated Donald Trump the president with her husband, I just want you to hear that clip. The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely, uh, unacceptable. So my president or excuse me, my husband, uh, that's a, that's a good one. My husband is out here. At least she's in on the joke, yeah but I, I suppose that look, you're absolutely right, Miles, that he wants somebody who is going to be loyal and adoring and good-looking and all those things, and sure enough he's got that, but the other but he wants the person to be good. I mean, Caroline Leavitt was an absolute class act, didn't blink, faced the gunfire was absolutely clear in her messaging and what she wanted to say, and she knew that is what Donald Trump wanted to say, and she said it with absolute confidence and belief, and I think what you saw there was, oh my, you know, Donald Trump is not going to be pleased with that just as he wasn't pleased with Sean Spicer, his first press secretary, who didn't seem to be that convincing when he was trying to tell everyone that it was the biggest crowd ever for the inauguration. You know, I'm going to deconstruct that a bit because I find the criticism of her slightly odd because it's coming from people like us saying her doublespeak wasn't fluent enough. Her propaganda wasn't fast enough. And I think, you know, if you, if you go back to what you're saying, you're praising Caroline Leavitt for managing to lie more effectively. I'm saying she was very good at her job and what Donald Trump wanted. Yeah, but, you know, we have come a long way. I mean, how many, how many press briefing secretaries have we had? I mean, you had probably 50, right? In the old days, the whole form of that job was to try and deliver clarity from the president to the American people. I'm not, I'm not saying that your role isn't to massage a bit. But this, this is a very, very different operation. And we are sitting here saying, oh, you know, Katie stumbled a bit because she she hasn't got the propaganda kind of flowing from her fingernails just yet. She stumbled a bit because she didn't know the lines quite well enough. And, you know, Sean Spicer was telling us about crowd size. That was a lie. And he got fired for not doing that well enough. And Caroline Levitt lied continuously. And she never got fired because her lying was so good. So I think we have to be quite careful what we're asking for here, genuinely. Well, you know, I have to say just the other week, I caught up with my friend Stephanie Grisham, who spent a period of time, of course, as White House press secretary and famously never did a briefing. And I say my friend Stephanie Grisham, and that's an interesting thing to say, because there was a point when I'd quit the administration and spoken out about what I had been seeing. And Stephanie, of course, was there on television, you know, ripping me to shreds personally. But we've since become friends on the back end of that administration. And she said something to me the other week about how one of the reasons she never took that podium is because she didn't think she was prepared to do the thing that you just said, Emily. Yes, she was prepared to go talk policy issues. She'd been in the administration for years. She knew what was going on. She knew the players. But she wasn't sure that she wanted to go act like Caroline Leavitt. But she wasn't sure that she wanted to go up there and confidently say things that inside she knew wasn't true. And so it was interesting when you saw Katie take the podium. It was sort of like you're seeing the paint peeling off the building or you're seeing a little bit behind the curtain here because even the diehards aren't really prepared to do the thing that Donald Trump expects of them. Do they really believe the things that they are supposed to be saying? And in this little snippet that we got of Katie, I think you saw that maybe his efforts to have sycophants at the microphone are flagging. Yeah, look, he's you can have sycophants at the microphone. I'm just saying that you've got to be good at the job. You've got to be articulate. You've got to be able to kind of present it. And she takes three questions. Just, you know, the dynamics of the room that she's pissed off virtually the whole of the White House press corps, guaranteeing that on social media it's just become the punchline to a joke and Trump will absolutely hate that the extent to which the late night comedians the social media memes are being produced at great rates of laughing at her well I think somebody from inside the administration tipped off CNN that her first appearance was brutal brutal is not the ideal word that you want after the first briefing in front of the world and so and so I think the element to which you're scraping the barrel is that she just can't string a sentence together with any confidence and only takes questions i think it was Breitbart, Fox and there was one other loyal oh and the Daily the Daily Mail those were the three questions that she took in that briefing didn't take any of the main networks and maybe that's fine but you know the thing about it was that she was prepared to go toe-to-toe with all the you know the CNN's the MSNBCs and all the rest of them bombastic. She was a fighter. So my question to you, Miles, is, and this goes back to, I don't know if you ever saw the comedy show, The Thick of It, where Malcolm Tucker is having to explain that if you fire somebody after a year, it's because they screwed up in the job. But if you fire somebody after a week, it's because you screwed up in appointing them. Do you think that Trump would be brave enough to swap her out because he recognizes straight away that she's not going to manage her brief? Or do you think he has to kind of let this bed in and let us all get used to it well he's going to want to find some excuse that doesn't point back to him i mean you can guarantee one thing this is what Donald Trump went to bed thinking about i don't care if he said she did excellent which is what he said Donald Trump will not be able to stand the coverage he watches all of the cable news even the outlets he thinks opposes them he reads the uh you know the headlines that are printed out for him he's not going to be able to avoid how bad she did it's going to be a thorn in his side but he's not going to throw her overboard until he can say it's her fault but this is potentially where he has an out because the elephant in the room here with her performance yesterday was a lie that she apparently has been telling about her qualifications which is that for years, Katie's been going on national television and conservative outlets talking about how she is an attorney. And when Donald Trump went outside and took questions from the press in front of the White House and she stood behind him, they asked the president what kind of attorney she was and what state she passed the bar exam in the United States. And she basically shouted from the background that it was in China that she got her legal credentials in China which has led to a lot of head scratching here in the United States some observations that you actually can't become an American lawyer in China, period, full stop. You can't, it's not a thing, uh they don't do the bar exam there in the United States but also this bigger question of a law firm that she worked for in China which was advising, supporting and advancing the interests of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese government entities and this big question is now hovering over her job which is, wait, is the spokesperson for the President of the United States, someone who previously worked to advance the interests of the Chinese, that going back to the question you asked Emily, that is potentially the outlet if Donald Trump wants to get rid of her is to say I didn't know this about her background, uh you know we have to let her go. Now you could look it up on LinkedIn, they should have known, they should have done the background check, but if he wants to let her go, he has a potential way to do it. I mean just what a week we're having when again the questions over whether Donald Trump is an asset of the Russians that's right, to the four you can be a Russian asset, but Jesus, not a Chinese asset. What's going on, we've got, we've got it all covered now haven't we? Donald Trump is an asset of, of Moscow and you've got the new press secretary who's an asset of Beijing, I mean you've got it all covered there in one go, I you know, it sounds like we're being shallow talking about the new press secretary when they're you know all these other things are going on about Ukraine, the midterms you know but they all weave in together don't they that you've got now a press secretary who's got this Chinese connection, we've had Donald Trump talking about you know bending over backwards this week to accommodate Vladimir Putin so that you get the impression that Donald Trump is no longer interested in getting a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, he wants Russia to win every action he's taken in the past six seven days makes it clear to me that Donald Trump just wants Russia to win and he doesn't give a ---- what happens as long as he gets to that point yeah arguably I would say the most interesting line of her brief press conference came right at the end where she said the president is now off to Alaska now the idea that Donald Trump would actually have to fly up to Alaska to this Republican red state which is about minerals maybe on a walking holiday I think that's exactly what he was doing Alaska hasn't voted for a Democrat for like miles, we'll know the numbers but I'm guessing three decades at least right the fact that he is having to jump on a plane to go to Alaska to campaign in a state for the incumbent Republican who will now probably get beaten by Mary Peltola, the Democrat, because he is called Dan Sullivan And there is also, just to interject this, another Dan Stevens in the race who may very well be trying to topple the incumbent Dan Stevens. Trump shouldn't be spending time three weeks out from the midterms in Alaska unless something is going seriously wrong with Republicans in this set of elections but he is there's extreme desperation right now extreme desperation you even saw it in the way he responded to the press conference when he said it was a commanding press briefing that's what the white house said it was commanding they're overstating the things that they're very very anxious about including electorally everything the president is having to do to shore up republicans it shows the level of desperation but that also cuts both ways is you know there's the old adage desperate times call for desperate measures you also have a president right now that is reported to be considering some very desperate potential measures about the midterm elections i mean he has had a convicted criminal, Tina Peters from Colorado, an election conspiracist in the Oval Office recently, who was reportedly talking to the president about her plan to declare a national emergency and have him be able to seize ballots across the United States. One of Donald Trump's boyhood friends, Peter Tichin, who is a lawyer who is also advising Tina Peters, the election conspiracy theorists. He spoke to Vanity Fair and sorry, he spoke to The Atlantic the other day and made clear that he thinks there's a scenario in which the president can and perhaps should declare martial law around the midterm elections. So you've got some people in Donald Trump's ear right now that are saying if you're losing this badly, there are some break glass in case of emergency options for you, Mr. President. Options, by the way, that would upend the constitutional order here in the United States. So we can't lose sight of the fact that there's some pretty extreme things being considered in the background here in this White House. But for all that we have seen, the sort of breach of norms, the fact that Trump is prepared to kind of do anything at any time, there have still been the odd checks and balances, haven't there from the supreme court on you know certain at certain times and at congress i still find it hard to but i mean i can believe that donald trump will entertain the idea of it but am i just being naive in thinking that the other forces the general counsels the doj the judges will say you just can't do that or is that do you think these are possible scenarios that we could get martial law and the midterms suspended. You don't, I mean, you don't need an imagination. That's the point. Like, ten years ago, you needed an imagination to entertain things like this. In a post-January 6th world, you don't need that imagination. You can just point to the fact that it has happened already, it has been tried. But I suppose January 6th showed that the Constitution worked. Yes. I mean, you know, it did get certified. But all I'm saying is we don't see the courts or the judges or anyone step in first, right? They probably, that somebody probably should have stepped in before it got to January the 6th when he carried on telling this lie about having, you know, won the election that he clearly lost. We don't see these kind of institutions really work until after the event. It's important to remember that on January 6th, the day before you had the vice president, Mike Pence, call up one of the top conservative judges in America, Jay Michael Luttig and ask him basically am I allowed to do this am i allowed to stand in the way of the peaceful transfer of power and Judge Luttig urged him no you are not and gave him basically the constitutional basis for refusing a lot about the stability of the american constitutional order came down to that phone call came down to one man's conscience on that very pivotal day and i think unfortunately there aren't even the Mike Pences anymore left around Donald Trump you know i posted something yesterday that my former boss john kelly said to me six years ago this was just uh after the 2020 election when or sorry just before the 2020 election i had a phone call with him and people were speculating that if donald trump lost he would not cede power and if you guys remember famously his acting chief of staff mick mulvaney published an opinion piece in the wall street journal and said if donald trump loses he will concede gracefully and you know we will move on and i was speaking to kelly on the phone and he said this i'm going to tell you what his quote was he said miles i don't know how he trump is not in an institution somewhere whether it's a jail or a nut house he's a seriously sick guy i have never heard him say anything that wasn't a lie. Nothing would please me more than if he chained himself to the resolute desk and they have to go in and cut the chains and carry him away in a straight jacket. That is the former chief of staff to the president of the United States who said that. And you know what? He wasn't far off from the scenario. Donald Trump didn't chain himself to the resolute desk, but he tried very, very hard to not transfer power. So when I think about the midterms and the things that could happen, I'm not taking the crazy stuff on the table or off the table. I imagine the crazy stuff is being put right in the center of the table for him to look at and to consider as we get towards November 3rd and as we find out the results. 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 so personally and what did she say to you i didn't speak to her now uh but she will uh not be there i didn't like what i read there is a lot of excitement amongst the press corps there to find out more about the demise of Kimberly Guilfoyle she isn't of the trump family but she almost was she dated don jr she was his fiance and almost as a sort of consolation prize i think after they split up she was sent off to become the u.s ambassador to greece you know get her away from the family but don't ---- talk us and there you go you've got a nice post um that was all going well until she fairly well until she asked a donor we understand to settle her hundred thousand dollar american express bill we should say that's the reporting from the wall street journal who has been pretty epic on the corruption and graft uh issues around this administration and yesterday she got fired yeah i i love the way that donald trump said she dated my son a long time ago i mean what 20 30 years ago 40 years ago no it was actually in you know 2020 that she was appearing alongside uh Donald Trump Jr and i think it's worth this yeah i think it's worth listening because at the fake Republican convention that took place in 2020 which you will remember took place at a time of COVID and social distancing so Donald Trump decided there has to be a convention i have to have the big speeches and people cheering for me Well, he had the big speech and Kimberly Guilfoyle gave the loudest speech you've ever heard to an empty room. Have a listen. Like my parents, you can achieve your American dream. You can be that shining example to the world, manifest and be the change in this country that you dream, that you hope, that you believe in. stand for an American president who is fearless who believes in you and who loves this country and will fight for her president trump is the leader who will rebuild the promise of America and ensure that every citizen can realize their American dream ladies and gentlemen during that clip and you were mouthing along to her words which suggests to me you have watched that clip more than a human super fan here but i mean Miles the remarkable thing going back to her sacking is we have talked so much about the grift and the corruption where people don't even bat an eyelid in Washington to what's going on and you kind of think god how bad must it have been with Kimberly Guilfoyle yeah that you this is a hanging offense i mean everyone else has just been, oh, well, nothing to see here. Move on. And Kimberly Guilfoyle has had to walk the plank. It's extraordinary for three reasons. I mean, the first is that it even happened that she, you know, allegedly said to a donor, I need you to pay my hundred thousand dollar Amex bill. And, you know, basically implied that she was going to give special access to the administration for this among other claims of her grifting that act is shocking enough that anyone in a position of public trust would think they could go do that and get away with it it is equally shocking the second thing that they threw her overboard because this is a Trump administration that refuses to admit fault and yet the headlines were apparently getting bad enough that the president said those words we don't like what we are reading and so they got rid of her but the third thing John to your question that's remarkable is that this is the person being held accountable for corruption in Trump's Washington a hundred thousand dollar Amex bill i'm going to compare that to a story that landed last month that the Trump administration is illegally withholding more than a hundred billion dollars in aid to U.S. states in federal assistance to U.S. states and that includes emergency assistance to Democratic blue states that the president has lorded over them because he has said he doesn't want to give support to states that don't support him politically this is something that the president also in the past week said at rallies in Ohio and North Carolina that effectively if those states don't elect candidates he likes he won't be providing life-saving aid anymore to those states so you think about the magnitude here more than a hundred billion dollars in Trump corruption in Washington DC with federal spending and Kimberly Guilfoyle's a hundred thousand dollar Amex and Kimberly's the one that takes the fall you say a hundred thousand dollars and of course in any normal circumstance You know, you pay my hundred thousand dollar Amex bill and I'll give you access to the administration. That is, of course, unacceptable. But it's when we've seen so much grift from the Trump children, from those around the president, all enriching themselves off the back of him being in the Oval Office. I wonder why Kimberly Guilfoyle has been singled out in this way. I think it's because there was a paper trail, to be honest. And I think what happens is whilst it's kind of rumour or whilst it's, you know, kind of speculation, you're fine. But even she starts apparently writing, I mean, again, this is down to very good reporting in the journal, that her correspondence with one of these sort of grifters who was helping her get rich would leave a paper trail. She says, Eric, I really wish you'd stop papering all these things. Right. In other words, she does not want things to link back on the paper. And maybe that's why when Trump says we've read about it, he means that the reporting, obviously. But it becomes just that little bit harder to kind of I guess I guess she's an embarrassment that he doesn't need. Right. Well, and there's there's perhaps an even simpler explanation to all of it is, you know, John, you mentioned how did the trump kids get away with this how does trump get away with this because they have the trump name kimberly guilfoyle's big achilles heel is she was engaged to one of donald trump's kids but never actually married him she's not in the family she's not getting that protection she's not getting the president's team saying look the other way and instead they're throwing her overboard whereas the trump family is continuing to profit off of presidency i mean you've got baron trump who's an unemployed college student who's now worth close to 200 million dollars over the course of the second trump administration right but no one's asking questions about how baron trump got this rich during his dad's second term it's one good paper round also cleaning cars you can make some real money cookies yeah it's amazing economies on your side it's amazing what you can achieve yeah also miles you do make it sound like it's something like a mafia operation where if you're in the family it's fine and if you're out the family it's you know deadly for you how strange how strange indeed john we'll be back in a moment talking about what's happening on the debate stage so we're now less than three weeks away from the midterm elections and as you can imagine in these key battleground states there are all sorts of tv debates that have been taking place between you know the protagonists and antagonists uh vying for the senate seat um and they've obviously got very lively we've talked about susan collins before in maine where she is struggling to stay on as a republican senator we've talked about ohio and iowa and other places i think one of the races that is kind of getting a lot of attention is georgia not because i think that it's necessarily the closest race i think probably the democrat incumbent john ossoff is going to win but the way that John Ossoff is commanding the debate stage seems to be kind of getting people to talk not just about him returning to the Senate but maybe bigger things afterwards yeah people are getting quite excited by John Ossoff including I have to say my good friend George Clooney I didn't mention this week but John Ossoff was the guy who you might remember in the summer just threw out this line, travels with Natalie, which set the hares running in terms of the relationship that Trump was or wasn't having with his human printer, the woman who sort of follows him around a lot, Natalie. Anyway, he has been sort of overperforming expectations, I think, for many Democrats who were starting, as you say, to look at him not just as a Georgia senator, he's the incumbent, he should win this race again, but as a potential candidate for 2028. and he was on the stage with his opponent Mike Collins when Mike Collins brought up something he probably wishes he hadn't he slept on the Epstein Island he stayed at his Manhattan townhouse he sent Epstein ice cream and said it's for the girls you claim to fight against the Epstein class but I'm gonna tell you this call is coming from inside the house and the Epstein class is on stage right now, and it's you. Will you condemn Reid Hoffman and apologize for your hypocrisy tonight? Mike, who on your team advised you to raise the Epstein files? You voted to cover up the evidence, Mike. Listen, folks, I want to repeat it again. It's important to understand. When Congress was voting on whether to release that evidence, we all knew what had happened, but you voted to cover up the evidence, even though you knew 14 year old girls had been raped because Donald Trump told you to Donald Trump, who, by the way, is named a thousand times in the Epstein files. Have you ever met with Jeffrey Epstein's victims when they ask you why you voted to cover up the Epstein files? Do you have an answer? What would you say to them tonight, Mike, after you voted to cover up evidence of the most notorious sex trafficking ring in American history? The vote is public record you voted to cover up the Epstein files you should explain that vote to Jeffrey Epstein's victims right now Representative Collins it's just brutal absolutely brutal um i you know i've also got to say there's only one fact correction to what John Ossoff said which is that Donald Trump isn't mentioned just a thousand times in the Epstein files he's mentioned 38,000 times in the Epstein files let me tell you who's mentioned a thousand times in something Jesus is only mentioned a thousand times in the Bible okay Donald Trump that's true Donald Trump is mentioned 38,000 times in the Epstein files but it was a devastating takedown and it also goes to show by the way this vulnerability Republicans have across the board on what Americans continue to say is the number one episode of corruption right now in the United States of America poll after poll shows the Epstein files for Democrats and Republicans continues to rank as a top voting issue in fact in a survey three weeks ago we saw that for Republicans the Epstein files rank above affordability right now affordability that goes to show you how weak they are on this issue uh and and the trap that Mike Collins set for himself we'll be back next week where Mike well are you going to go back and read the Bible and tell us how many times Moses appears where do you think the stats will take us next i'm finally next week going to tell you about my conversations with my good friend Julia Roberts but i'm keeping that private uh and until we have uh our gathering next week i think i'll tell you what i think i'm taking next week off bye-bye bye bye the news agents usa is brought to you by HSBC UK opening up a world of opportunity this has been a global production