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The five-day press secretary was accused of being a pro-Trump “robot.”

Donald Trump’s flash-in-the-pan press secretary short-circuited when the president’s longtime frenemy put her in the hot seat.

Katie Zacharia, 41, lasted five days at the White House podium before her unceremonious exit. On Wednesday, she sat down with Piers Morgan, 61, for a showdown that grew testier by the minute. Ten minutes in, Morgan’s patience ran out.

“Come on, let’s cut the crap here and have a serious, genuine conversation,” the Uncensored host said. “You sounded like a robot. Has Donald Trump got some program plugged into you to make you come out with all this stuff?”

“I do not sound like a robot,” Zacharia shot back.

No White House press secretary has ever had a shorter run. Her debut briefing on Oct. 13 lasted 14 minutes and she fielded only three questions, including a gaffe where she accidentally called her husband “my president.”

Two days later, Fox’s Sean Hannity, 64, put her on the spot over the bar exam she failed and never retook. Within 24 hours, she was out.

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Morgan opened with a jab, asking how it felt to be “in many people’s eyes a bit of a laughingstock.”

“Working for President Trump was an incredible gift,” Zacharia replied, describing it as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Katie, he did fire you after five days,” Morgan said.

“Piers, this has been litigated and adjudicated,” she said. “The president’s comments on the White House South Lawn were what was discussed and I’m going to leave it there.”

Morgan played Trump’s remarks to reporters on the day he ousted her.

“I said, ‘Is this for you, Katie?’ Because honestly, you don’t need this,” the president said in part in the clip.

“I’m curious. Listen, I’ve known Donald Trump for 20 years... and I sort of understand the way he operates and the way he does things. In a very, very nice way, he was publicly chucking you under the bus there, wasn’t he?” said Morgan.

Morgan and Trump have been friends since 2008, when the president crowned him winner of The Celebrity Apprentice. Trump calls him “champ,” and Morgan has called Trump “a very loyal friend in many ways.” The bond has limits, though. Morgan insists he’s no MAGA supporter and slammed Trump’s AI video of the Obamas as “vile” and “racist.”

Zacharia, meanwhile, dodged again. “As I said earlier, this has been litigated and adjudicated,” she responded, looking fed up.

“Why don’t you just answer some questions for me?” Morgan asked.

Zacharia repeated her answers and then changed the subject.

“Why aren’t we covering the first million barrels that arrived in Texas yesterday in his historic… 65 billion barrels of oil deal that he made with Venezuela?” she said, in part.. “Why aren’t we covering these [wins]?”

After more back-and-forth, Morgan asked, “You do realize you’re not the press secretary, right?”

He pressed her on what she told Trump when the president asked whether the job was for her. She refused to say.

“Piers, I will keep private conversations between the president and myself confidential,” Zacharia replied, as the host shot back, “he [Trump] made them public.”

Zacharia then put her foot down.

“I’m not gonna mince words or split hairs over this. I will not disclose private conversations that I’ve had with the president. I will keep fighting for him every single day. No matter how hard the media wants to spin, no matter how hard anchors, pundits, reporters, and journalists want to spin what he is doing and focus it on me. I will continue fighting for him. I am ruthlessly loyal. I always have been, and I will continue to be, Piers. This interview should not be about me; it should be about the fact that we are less than five days away from the midterms…”

“Katie, Katie, Katie, Katie, the whole point of the interview was it was about you,” Morgan cut in, before accusing her of being a robot, asking, “Has Donald Trump got some program plugged into you to make you come out with all this stuff?”

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Zacharia retorted, “I take issue with the way you’re couching this...” she said, adding, “I do not sound like a robot to your point. What I am is trying to continue a conversation in a forward trajectory about what President Trump is doing, which you are not wanting to engage in...” She continued talking about serving the president “in the best of my capacity,” becoming increasingly heated.

Morgan, stopping her, repeated his position before Zacharia fired back that she didn’t receive the talking points from Morgan’s team.

“What did you think you were going to be talking about? Morgan said, appearing baffled.

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“Midterms. And a brief glance at my time as press secretary,” she said in the awkward moment.

After offering her the chance to provide the “brief glance,” Morgan twisted the knife. “We both got hired by Donald Trump,” he said. “The only difference is I never got fired by him.”

Zacharia accused Morgan of baiting her but claimed, “I’m not going to do it. I haven’t done it to this point and I’m not going to now. The focus should be on President Trump, not on me.”

“I haven’t asked you to say anything negative about him at all,” Morgan replied.

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“Piers, you’re baiting me. I had the opportunity to serve him in the capacity that I was asked to. And I’m not going to go for it, and I’m not going to speak negatively of him. He’s been wonderful to me, and I’m grateful for the,” Zacharia said.

“I’m not baiting you,” a shocked Piers responded.

“You’ve been at the center of a gigantic news story because you became the shortest-serving press secretary in the history of the American White House. It made you a global figure, and you agreed to come on this show.

“I’ve just checked with my producers exactly what you agreed to talk about is going to be you and what happened and their midterms. We haven’t misled you or misled anybody else. I’m not here to trap you. I’m just here to talk to somebody who was in the news who I’ve never met.”

He added, “I don’t know you, and I’m just curious about how it all felt. You don’t have to leave Donald Trump out of it if you like. I don’t care. Right? It was all just what happened to you. When you watch back, for example, the clips from your first and only press conference, what do you feel when you watch that?”

Zacharia, frozen, appeared unimpressed: “Piers, I am grateful to be here. I am not going to continue litigating this. This is over 10 days ago that this happened. We’re five days away from a midterm. I’m here on a show. What was told to me was going to be a brief overview of my time as press secretary and then discussing the midterms. I - that is what I agreed to come on the show, and I’m not going to continue having the focus be on me, Piers. I am not.”

“You’ve literally refused to say a single thing about it,” Piers shot back.

Zacharia then pointed to her post-firing media tour, insisting she’d already said her piece.

“As I said... the Wall Street Journal encompasses a lot of the questions you’ve asked. I wrote an op-ed in the New York Post, and I discussed this on my interview with Rob Finnerty last night on Newsmax.”

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Later in the interview, Zacharia finally softened when Morgan asked about her family.

She explained that relatives who had shunned her in 2020 were rallying behind her, saying they were “disgusted by the treatment of me.” Even her Democrat mother, she said, called to tell her “CNN was even more compassionate than some other networks.”

Morgan credited her with opening up. “You finally got uncensored, Katie,” he said. “Took a while, but there I started to see the real you.” If she’d sounded “less robotic” at the podium, he added, “I think you’d still be standing there.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to a representative for Zacharia for comment.

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