LEGAL EAGLE

Trump’s Slurs Come Back to Bite New Mouthpiece

The president has savaged rivals for flunking the bar exam, but his new press secretary failed it, too.

President Donald Trump’s habit of belittling rivals who failed the bar exam has come back to haunt him as his new mouthpiece fends off questions about her legal credentials.

Trump’s new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, whom the president introduced as “an attorney,” admitted Thursday that she failed California’s bar exam after graduating from law school in 2011.

Trump, 80, has repeatedly mocked his political rivals over their bar exam records, even calling then-Vice President Kamala Harris a “moron” in 2024, despite her having passed the exam on her second attempt in 1990.

Meanwhile, his administration has offered a more glowing assessment of Zacharia. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung described her as “uniquely qualified and whip smart” as questions mount over how the 41-year-old mother of four has presented her legal background.

Trump savaged Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign, suggesting that “maybe she wouldn’t pass the cognitive test,” referring to screening tests that the president has repeatedly claimed to have aced.

“She didn’t pass her bar exam. She’s not a smart person. She’s not a person that should represent our country,” he also told reporters in October 2024.

“She gives an answer that only a moron would give,” Trump told Tucker Carlson in an October 2024 interview. “You can give bad answers, but this was an answer that a person who was not a smart person, a person who got the lowest score, perhaps in the history of the bar exams, [would give], okay? You know, she failed the bar exam, okay? But this is a person, this is a very low-IQ individual.”

Hillary Clinton, who failed the D.C. bar exam in 1973, received the same treatment during Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016.

She “went to Washington D.C., she took her bar exam and she failed, right? Oh, she’s a genius. No, no. She failed on a bar exam,” Trump said at a rally.

Outside the White House this week, Zacharia was asked which state she had passed the bar in. Trump’s new press secretary replied, “When I moved to China.”

She later told The New York Times that she had misheard the question over the noise of Marine One.

“I assumed the question was, ‘Where were you after law school?’” she told the paper.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Zacharia failed the exam in 2011 after graduating from Pepperdine University’s law school. She subsequently joined Zhong Lun Law Firm in Beijing.

A person with direct knowledge of the matter told the publication that lawyers had advised Zacharia that she could provide legal analysis based on her degree and international transaction experience. Zacharia also told the Times that Pepperdine’s president had said she could call herself a lawyer, but not an attorney.

Trump nevertheless called her “a distinguished Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, an attorney” in his appointment announcement on Truth Social.

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Two nonprofit groups have demanded investigations into how Zachary has represented her legal background.

Democracy Defenders Fund alleged in a complaint that she “apparently held herself out as a lawyer and practiced law” while working as general counsel for nonprofit Fix California. Campaign for Accountability filed a separate complaint concerning her media appearances.

“Ms. Zacharia has represented herself as a lawyer repeatedly to buttress her reputation and credibility as a television legal commentator and now as the White House spokesperson, yet it seems it was all a lie,” Campaign for Accountability executive director Michelle Kuppersmith said in a statement.

“In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery; it’s a crime. The State Bar should investigate whether Ms. Zacharia has misled the public about her credentials and hold her accountable if she has.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

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Isabel van BrugenFreelance Writer

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