Donald Trump's second presidency, it was said, was not going to be like the first. He arrived after a journey in the desert, but with the lessons learned; surrounded by an army of faithful, and not, as in 2017, by a team of collaborators willing to contradict him from time to time. Nor would it be, as that one was, an incessant spectacle of leaks, behind-the-scenes stabbings and impulsive dismissals at the touch of a tweet.
This week, Donald Trump's second White House slipped, just over two weeks before the midterms, the midterm elections, into chaos from another era with the unexpected spectacle of the departure, after five days in office, of the president's newly appointed spokesperson, Katie Zacharia.
His contract was announced last Friday by Trump on his social network. On Monday, she signed in for her first day on the job. On Tuesday he gave a very brief and nervous 14-minute press conference. Clearly improvised and poorly prepared, the premiere was enough for bets to begin being accepted in Washington about how long Zacharia was going to last in the West Wing.
Wednesday and Thursday they went on a damage mitigation operation. The information that she had lied on her resume by posing as a lawyer when, although she has a law degree, she never passed the exam required in the United States to practice, she ended up confirming. She did it in interviews in conservative media, which treated her with a harshness that perhaps she did not expect.
On the Fox News morning show and in a chance meeting with reporters at the White House, Zacharia repeated on Friday, with one of the broad smiles with which she has illuminated her 15 minutes of fame, that working for Trump was a “dream come true” and that she was willing to give it her all. Shortly after, the president of the United States dropped her in a particularly cruel way.
He first told reporters that he had advised Zacharia to quit his job if he wanted to be “happy.” Later, the White House leaked to the media that the new spokesperson was on her way out. Soon, he was on the street.
His departure ends a turbulent week in Trump's circle. It began with the resignation as ambassador to Greece due to alleged corruption of Kimberly Guilfoyle, ex-fiancée of the president's eldest son. It continued with the end at the State Department of another ally, Paolo Zampolli, famous for having introduced Trump to his current wife, Melania. And it reached its climax with the dispute, in which the boss was forced to intervene, between two other loyal partners: the former envoy for Venezuela Richard Grenell and the lawyer, this one, Alina Habba.
Habba accuses Grenell of keeping nearly $6 million that her husband, a Turkish investor named Turhan Mildon, gave to the Kennedy Center. In the background are the interests of both men in the phenomenal business opportunities open in post-Maduro Venezuela.
This has also been the week in which The Washington Post has published that internal maneuvers are multiplying to oust the Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, Trump's right-hand woman, after the elections. With his nondescript appearance and his discretion, Wiles, whose daughter is also at the center of a scandal for her business dealings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is (or was) the image of the stability of this White House; the woman who has brought order to a position for which four officials paraded during Trump's first term (for the two that, for example, Joe Biden had in his four years in power).
The president of the United States did not consult Wiles about the signing of Zacharia. When she went up to the lectern last Tuesday to speak - nervous, with her eyes on the papers and without answers to the questions she was asked -, 47 days had passed since the last time someone in her position had appeared before journalists. It was Karoline Leavitt, the youngest press secretary in history. He left in August, after 17 months on the job and a brilliant MAGA service record.
Trump felt no rush to replace her until he finally had her. Zacharia's appointment was a decision he made personally, according to White House sources cited by the American media, when he became fed up with being presented with one disappointing candidate after another. But, above all, while he saw the midterm elections approaching that do not look good for his people.
This is surely the president who has acted the most as his own communications director in the history of this country, but even Trump needs someone to defend his policies in the press room when his popularity ratings and polls continue to decline for Republicans. If, as the polls say, the Democrats are preparing to recover one or both chambers, then a battering ram like Leavitt will be even more valuable, always ready to attack his adversaries, pamper the media and defend the indefensible, with lies when necessary.
It had been enough for Trump in his particular selection process to see Zacharia on television always ready to speak well of him and his unpopular policies. Because it is well known: the sum of both virtues, telegenicity and blind loyalty, is irresistible for the president of the United States.
So it makes sense that what brought her down wasn't her disastrous first appearance. Not even the scandal that he had lied about his resume (it couldn't be, for someone as deceitful as Trump). It was the fact of seeing her on two programs on, no less, Fox News, unable to escape the attacks with friendly fire bullets.
Interview interrupted
Hours after being defenestrated, the Wall Street Journal published an interview given by Zacharia to the conservative newspaper late Friday morning. It is a brutal text, in which it is clear that the spokesperson had no idea that they were about to fire her.
The article says that she “projected calm” in her newly opened office “with few personal touches: a white orchid, a hair curler and a pair of heels on a shelf next to a toiletry bag.” Also, that he had slept “three hours”, because the previous day was the birthday of one of his four children and that he got up early to prepare for the interview with which he got the day off to a bad start. “My diet is [these days] little sleep, adrenaline through the roof and probably too much caffeine and nothing to eat,” Zacharia tells the Journal.
In the middle of the interview, someone knocks on the door to tell her that the vice president, J. D. Vance, wants to talk to her, that he never returns to the reporters. Meanwhile, Trump goes out to meet reporters on the White House helipad to give a thumbs up to Zacharia's future.
In addition to resurrecting the memory of the chaos of Trump's first term, this week's show has served to return the spotlight to Anthony Scaramucci. He was White House communications director and lasted 11 days in office. On Tuesday, in the heat of the scandal, he created a new unit of measurement: the scaramucci. According to this, Zacharia has only survived 0.45 scaramuccis. “Records are there to be shattered,” he wrote on Friday.
Having become a critic of Trump, he also published another message on “In time, you will realize that the universe did you a big favor [with the layoff],” Scaramucci wrote.
It has not been revealed what future plans she has, but at least we know that she will not have to undo a move to Washington from California: she did not have time to do it. It is also unclear how much of Scaramucci's example she intends to follow, although, for the moment, she does not seem willing to accompany him to the other side of the mirror, where the anti-Trump converts await.
Quite the contrary, Zacharia ended his fifth and final day in the White House with a glowing message in
