TRUMPED UP

Katie Zacharia Was the Joke. Trump’s White House Is the Punchline

Zacharia couldn’t pass the bar—or the podium test. But at least she can now call herself a (former) press secretary and mean it!

Opinion

I mean, what even is a “lawyer”? Are we really going to get all upset just because Trump’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-her press secretary, the heretofore utterly obscure Newsmax host Katie Zacharia, claimed to be one even though she never passed the bar? Since when do people have to “pass a test” to be considered an accredited member of a profession? Yes, I know we make doctors pass a medical board exam, as well as cosmetologists, masseuses, and CPAs, but doesn’t that just prove my point?

No, wait, I’m being told it does not prove my point, which is exactly the problem with the whole rigged system! For example, when our president appointed an actual lawyer, former parking lot attorney Alina Habba, to be the interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, the courts ruled her appointment unlawful. Why are we letting the law stand in the way of legal appointments?

The genius of Donald Trump is elevating regular everyday Americans to positions of great power regardless of their qualifications, mental state or even their personal hygiene (even if he does fire some of them days later when their lack of qualifications is made clear, or at least deemed more embarrassing than RFK Jr. eating roadkill by the general public). Who else but Trump would even think to appoint a podcaster with almost no relevant experience to lead the FBI? Or said vaccine-skeptic roadkill fanatic to head HHS? Or a White Christian Nationalist morning show host to lead the Pentagon? Nobody, that’s who. Nobody except our president, thank you very much.

So why are people acting weird when the person he specifically hired to communicate with the press demonstrated a decided lack of ability to communicate during her first—and last—press conference?

It would be easy to make fun of Katie Zacharia as yet another vacuous hair extension with a Truth Social account, but that would only serve to take away from all the jokes about Natalie Harp. WE MUST PRESERVE THE NATALIE HARP JOKES!

And, honestly, the only reason I’m even suggesting Katie Zacharia is vacuous is because of those first-day jitters at the Briefing Room podium this week, during which she lied about Trump’s crowd sizes, mistakenly called her husband the president, and seemed to encounter the word “Venezuela” for the very first time.

I’m not going to judge her based on one shaky, 14-minute-long performance, even if her boss most certainly did. Nor am I going to judge her for responding, when asked, that she passed the bar “when I moved to China” because Zacharia later explained that she misheard the question thanks to background noise from Marine One. Has she also said she’s qualified as a helicopter pilot? Let’s not sweat the small stuff.

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Besides, she really did work “as an associate” at the Beijing-based Zhong Lun Law Firm while based in China for a couple of years, and there’s literally NO difference between “associate” and “practicing attorney” except for job title, credentials, and expertise. And no, she did not pass the bar in China.

In an interview with prominent American journalist—just kidding, total hack but you don’t need to pass a test to call yourself a journalist—Jack Posobiec of the very real American media outlet Real America’s Voice, Zacharia attempted to explain the confusion, claiming that calling herself a “lawyer” rather than a “practicing attorney” reflected her actual status because words… what do they even mean? She did little better during an interview with Trump stalwart Sean Hannity, and when you’ve lost Hannity…

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This administration places no premium on the truth–why should the American people? (Case in point: Trump saying that he’d asked poor Zacharia to “reconsider” her position when, in reality, she’d already been canned.) All of this is kind of funny in a “can you believe this s–t” kind of way, but it—again—speaks to the sloppy and slapdash nature of the Trump administration. Rather than vet their candidates, they just throw them to the wolves. Rather than, you know, plan a war, they just launch a bunch of missiles and wait for capitulation. Katie Zacharia was a pretty good joke, but the joke stopped being funny when this sloppiness started costing people their lives.

The more salient point, however, is what Zacharia’s appointment says about the quality of people lining up to work in this White House. This isn’t the A Team. It’s not even the C Team. This is Team Freaky Deaky, cast-offs and weirdos who would be unemployable in any other government, plunging their snouts as deep into the trough as they can before slaughter.

Sure, they might find a 4H goat-herding pageant runner-up to replace Zacharia. Or Scott Jennings. But when you’ve reached the bottom of the barrel, the only place to go is down.

Lying about being a lawyer was hardly the gravest sin among our current administration officials. Zacharia is merely the latest exhibit in the sprawling case against MAGA. And a minor exhibit to be sure, but one that tells us everything we need to know about the state of governance in our nation’s capital. A fake blonde with a fake law degree lying to the press for fame and, if she’s lucky, a spot on next season’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.

That’s who she is and who he is. It need not be who we are.

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Michael Ian Black

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