Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump THROWS His New Press Secretary UNDER THE BUS. "Is This For You, Katie?"

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

Tommy and Dan get into Trump firing new press secretary Katie Zacharia. CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR: ZIPRECRUITER: https://ziprecruiter.com/CROOKED CHAPTERS 0:00 - Katie Zacharia 6:53 - Ad break 7:44 - Katie Zacharia cont. Join this channel to get access to perks like ad-free episodes and exclusive videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKRoXz3hHAu2XL_k3Ef4vJQ/join Head to CrookedCon.com for tickets, lineup announcements, and more! http://crookedcon.com/ For a transcript of an episode of Pod Save America, please email [e-mail]. Subscribe to our channel! https://www.youtube.com/crookedmedia?sub_confirmation=1 Photos courtesy of AP Photo Archive Crooked believes that we need a better conversation about politics, culture, and the world around us—one that doesn’t just focus on what’s broken, but what we can do to fix it. At a time when it’s increasingly easy to feel cynical or hopeless, former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor have created a place where people can have sane conversations that inform, entertain, and inspire action. In 2017 they started Crooked with Pod Save America—a no-bullshit conversation about politics. Since then, we continue to add shows, voices, and opportunities for activism, because it’s up to all of us to do our part to build a better world. That’s it. End of mission. Learn more about Crooked at http://www.crooked.com Follow the pod on Twitter https://twitter.com/podsaveamerica Follow Crooked on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/CrookedMedia/ Follow Crooked on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low No Frills prices delivered. Get your first year of PC Express Pass for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at no frills.ca. Dan, we got some big breaking news. Newly minted White House Press Secretary Katie Zachariah is now the former newly minted White House Press Secretary Katie Zachariah after five very unimpressive days. So this comes after her disastrous first breast beefing.

on Tuesday. And there was this growing mess over Zechariah calling herself a lawyer and an attorney when she hadn't passed the bar exam. And then this embarrassing interview with Sean Hannity, of all people, on Thursday night. I think the Times, the New York Times broke the news of her departure. But it was pretty clear that the writing was on the wall after Trump said this. But I said, is this for you, Kenny? Because honestly, you don't need this. You don't have to be treated. I would say the fake news, but just generally the media is. very rough. She was on Sean Hannity last night, and Sean was a little bit tough. Katie's off to a start that the news has been so nasty to her. I've never seen anything like it, actually.

She reconsidering? And I said to her, honestly, if I were you, I'd reconsider. You'd think about it, but I would reconsider. You got a beautiful husband and family. I met the family yesterday. Beautiful kids. It's like from a picture postcard. And I said, you should reconsider because You don't want to go through it. What do you want her to do? I just want her to be happy. Look, he has suffered over the last few days. I'm not saying, get on me.

Maybe it's not for her. Dan, for a guy who built his entire brand around firing people, he sure is a wimp about actually doing it. Yeah, not exactly the toughest guy in the world. But look, if there's one thing I know about Trump is, he just wants people to be happy. That's always been his thing. He just wants Katie to be happy. Be with her face. He is a man who understands.

It's the importance of spending time with your children whose names he barely is remembers. And so he just wants her to be home with her family. It's just a nice guy. Katie, yeah, you moved across the country. You're humiliated in front of the national news media in the world, really. But I just want you to be happy. Yeah, he always talks about, he's so passive about these things. He talks about this disaster.

Like, she just arrived at the West Wing and it was like foisted upon him when all the reporting says that he personally selected her because he saw her on like newsmax a bunch of times and went around susie wiles his chief of staff who by the way we're now on day two of reading stories in politico about trump calling around to see if he should fire her so like this seems like it was entirely his decision yeah he completely owns this it makes no sense this is truly an in epic failure in every way shape or form they hired someone who was obviously unqualified they set that person up to fail by sending her out there i mean the timeline here is unbelievable. According to her from these interviews, she got hired on Friday, moved from California on Saturday. Then they had her brief on Tuesday. And she said the briefing materials came late

on Monday because it was a holiday. Like, Katie, that's not normally how it works. Like when we got to the White House, Robert Gibbs before his first press briefing as White House press secretary had done like literally months of preparation and murder boards. Practice briefings. Yeah. Look, she was bad at it. She was bad at like literally just reading. But in defense of Katie Zachariah, like, no one would be good at doing a White House press briefing if they'd literally not prepared at all. Like, that's just not how it works. I mean, her experience is taking questions on newsmax. And by the way, if you'd like listen to podcasts from people that were not fired from their White House jobs, please subscribe to POTSafe America here in YouTube.

It really helps us out a lot. It's free. And you help us build a progressive counterweight to the right wing crap coming from the White House and coming from Fox News. It's like, John and I were talking about this yesterday on Potsie America. I've never heard of her name before this. Like it's not like she's part of the Fox News Expanded Universe or she's been on even this is not qualified, but she's not even like she's on CNN.

Like Scott Jennings is like fighting with Democrats every single night. Oh no, she's on CNN. Brian Tyler Cohen has, has scrapped with her. It's just not in prime time. I've never, I've never seen her never heard her name before this. Like it takes someone like that.

Like they're different paths to this job. You can be a very seasoned media person who's done lots of really, really tough interviews. You know, you could be like Tony Snow, who was the Fox News Fox News Sunday host who went to become George Bush's president, George W. Bush's presbytery. You could be a just like, like Robert Gibbs was, like just a very season campaign communication as professional. You could be someone with a lot of White House experience like Josh.

And an insider, right? Like Robert Gibbs had spent the better part of the last decade with Barack Obama, knew him inside and out, could speak for him without going to ask. Katie Zachari just shows up from California one day and like barely knows Trump. There's, there's no chance. She could have found, they put her out to do a briefing before she could identify where all the bathrooms in the West Wing were. Like, I do think, like this is, I don't want to get into, you definitely don't want to use the one outside of the vice president's office. I'll just say that.

No. No, no, Biden's in there. Yeah. Still. Nothing says more about being vice president of the States as you have your own private bathroom. No, yeah. Well, that's. That's either here nor there.

I think it is pretty clear that someone set her up to fail. I mean, there's only two options here. Either people were so pissed that Trump just hired this random person for no reason, ignoring people who have worked for years, who've wanted this job, who are more qualified. And they said, you know what? It's yours. Just go do it and let her just give her all the rope. Or the White House is so fucking incompetent, takes the briefing so unsuriously, cares so little about answering questions correctly and appropriately and accurately that they just were like, yeah, of course, anyone can do this on a Tuesday. Yeah, that's fair.

Although they did hire, you know, Sean Spicer to be the first guy and he did all that prep and then shouted at us in an ill-fitting suit about crowd sizes. So I guess, you know. But he, like, there are some people who with all the prep in the world and all experienced the world still can't do the job. Sean Spicer's one of those people because he had been a Republican flack for a hundred years at that point. He couldn't do it under any scenario. But this was, she never had a chance to succeed. No. I doubt.

I would be fair, given all the chances of the world, and she doesn't strike me if she was going to nail this job. But like just from the get-go. Yeah, they absolutely set her up to fail. Besides being terrible at briefing, the press, though, Katie Zechariah was also facing this controversy over whether she was a lawyer or an attorney. She repeatedly identified herself as a lawyer or as an attorney, but it turns out she failed the bar exam. And then she moved to China. And then so when reporters in front of Trump were like, so what state did you pass the bar exam in?

She said, when I moved to China, which is not a state in the union last time I checked. Every part of that sentence was incorrect. She did not pass the bar in China's not the United States. And also, foreign citizens can't be lawyers in China. I can't remember where I read it, but some news report said that the role she played at this, you know, a large blue chip Chinese law firm was more like a paid intern. Pod Save America Breaking News is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Let's be honest. ZipRecruiter is everywhere.

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No wonder four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. But you've got to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash cricket to post your job. for free. Again, that ziprecruiter.com slash crooked. Oh, and if you forget where to go, don't worry, you'll hear another zip recruiter ad soon enough. There's a lot of people in this White House and administration that lie all the time about everything, about themselves, about their resumes. For some reason, though, this lie, this white lie, not a white lie, this significant lie, seemed to bother a lot of MAGA types, including Sean Hannity, who asked her about it on his show on Thursday night. Let's watch a cut down of what was a pretty bright.

brutal like six or seven minute interview. First moment as press secretary. It's been widely panned. I'm sure you're aware. It only lasted 14 minutes. You only took three questions. Questions about your legal background, calling yourself a lawyer.

You went to Pepperdine Law School, but you did not pass the bar exam, correct? Correct. Yes. But did you ever take the bar exam a second time? I did not, Sean. No. Okay.

Why only three questions and 14 minutes? and what might you do a little differently going forward? I can give you some unsolicited advice that's never going to be a friendly room to you. Yeah, so what I would say is I would absolutely be very well prepared on the briefing, Sean, and I would love, and I do love questions, and I would love to build a relationship with all of those members of the press corps. so there is a substantive component to us having an ability to interact.

And I will be very prepared, Sean, and I will step up to the duty of President Trump has asked me to as press secretary. All right, Katie, we wish you the best to look in the new position, and we do appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Sean, I do love questions. Like, they play her off like an Oscar speech. By the way, I've never seen that happen before on Fox News. Especially to a Trump aide. To a very newsworthy, like, top with us.

official. Also, like of the 14 minutes, she took three questions. They were all from friends in the room. It was Breitbart Fox News and the Daily Mail, but you know, who's counting? Dan, like, my read on people like Sean Hannity suddenly caring about like the veracity of past statements was that he figures, she's terrible at this job. Let's use this as a pretext to get her out of there. But what did you make of this? That's my take. Sean Hannity obviously, he loves Donald Trump. He obviously does not care about lying in politics or inflating one's resume. He does not care. about that. The people in the White House do not care with that. If she was good at her job, they would have gone to the mattresses to defend her over this very stupid thing. But I think

Sean Hannity saw that, saw the way you, like, if you can't handle this, forget what she said in the past. But the way she, how poorly she handled it in the aftermath of it coming out is a sign that she cannot do this job. That is failing communications 101. And so he is trying to save Trump from himself. I saw some people on Twitter point out that Hannity did a similar thing to Scott Pruitt, who was Trump's very corrupt EPA administrator in the first term. Yeah. And Scott Pruitt went on to Sean's show thinking he was doing a, like a friendly rehab interview. And Sean Haney took him down because he came to the conclusion that Scott Pruitt was bad for Donald Trump.

So he was not going to let him off the hook. And I think he decided this person, it's not up to the task. This is not good that she's there. And I'm going to try to end this thing while I can. The memo went out because she was on Fox and Friends this morning. And they also gave her a hard interview, which has actually never happened in the history of Fox and Friends. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, I also wonder, like, Sean Hannity and Trump talk all the time.

They, like, you know, put each other to bed at night. There's not, there's a version of this story where Trump's like, you know, give her the business a little bit. See if she's good. Help me push her out. Or, yeah, or like road tester for me. Yeah. Well, anyway, so Anthony Scaramucci is the big winner from all of this because she is beaten his record by a lot. Was it 10 days?

Was that what a mooch is? I really have tried really hard to forget this over the last. I know, nine years in my life. I saw someone on Twitter who pointed out that one scaramucci is 2.75 Zacharias. So maybe that will be the new unit of measurement of professional incompetence in the White House. That is the new math five days. So we're back to square one, Dan. Like, is it going to be Scott Jennings next?

Do they even bother picking a press secretary? Like certainly, I don't know why you would bother to do this before the midterms. Like Donald Trump is going to be out on the road. He does like three, you know, he's going to be doing rally speeches, presumably. And they'll want that to be the focus of the administration. administration's message. But also, when he's sitting at the White House, he will do like two, three press avails a day. We know this because we're stuck watching them half the time. Like, he is his own spokesperson. The way they handle the press, you don't need them.

Like Trump is his own spokesperson. In a normal White House, the press secretary's job, on their big news days where they will be the face of the White House or the president's not out and they have to handle all the hard questions or talk about whatever's happened in the world that matters. But on a day-to-day regular basis, they're really just answering and tracking down. A lot of stuff that's important to various news outlets, but it's not part of the daily conversation of the things we're talking about on the podcast. A lot of international news stuff, you know, confirming whether the president is going to meet with this person or not.

Like, they are a conduit of information for the press. And it is their job to stand there, you know, three, four times a week and take those questions. the White House does not care about answering those questions or helping the press do their job, which is sort of the traditional role, the press secretary is to sit between the president and the press and try to help both do their jobs. They don't care about that. So I'm not entirely sure what the purpose is other than Trump really likes to take about an hour

or two, an hour and a half in the middle of his day to watch television. Right. And this is, you know, maybe he doesn't like what comes on some of the on Fox in the middle of the day sometimes. And so this is what he wants to watch. But I think that's the only reason while they'll do it. Yeah, he likes to watch me TV and it's like when Will Kane gets preempted or whatever, the briefing, I'm sure he likes that. Yeah, there, there is a whole waitout staff still there that will do like the kind of logistics, the care and feeding, the responding to questions

to the extent that they do this. There just won't be an obvious person to brief at the podium. Maybe they'll keep having like, you know, J.D. Vance do it or Marco Rubio or other senior officials. Or maybe they'll just decide they do not care. But, you know, I don't know that it matters at all. The context of this, I think that it doesn't matter to the world. No, the prosecutor used to be such an important thing that even after the 2006 elections, part of Bush's sort of reset was to get a new press secretary. That's when he got Tony Snow and got rid of Scott McClellan. What I think here is that I hope it punctures forever the idea that this is a well-run White House

or a bit of a better run White House. This is absolute rank incompetence of the highest level. And they are like, they have fucked up the Iran War. They fucked up. But the stuff they can control, they're also fucking up. And every day between now and the midterm, they're just wasting an opportunity to do something productive. I don't know what that productive thing would be.

They haven't found it to date. But it's just it's true incompetence. Trump said in the same media veil where he kind of tossed Zachariah that Susie Wiles was staying and would be there for a long time. Whether she stays or she doesn't, I hope we can all now dispense with the idea that she is doing a great job as she has a staff because she is absolutely not. A press secretary was hired and then crashed and burned on her watch without her ever really knowing or understanding.

And that's not a sign of a strong chief of staff. That is not a good chief of staff. Yeah, they just lit on fire a week's worth of messaging opportunities because they hired a totally incompetent person to be the White House Press Secretary. And that is all you need to know about how this place was run. All right. Thank you, everybody, for watching this episode of POTSave America here on YouTube. Please subscribe.

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