Trump urges new press secretary to ‘reconsider’ taking job: ‘Is this for you, Katie?’

Donald Trump has urged Katie Zacharia, his new White House press secretary, to “reconsider” taking the job after she faced intense scrutiny from news outlets, including the rightwing cable network Fox News.Speaking with reporters outside the White House on Friday, the US president said Zacharia had been “treated very badly by the media” after she stumbled through a 14-minute press conference on Tuesday and questions arose over her legal credentials.“I said, ‘Is this for you, Katie? Because honestly, you don’t need it,’” Trump recalled to reporters. “I said to her, ‘Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider. You think about it, but I would reconsider.’”During an appearance on the rightwing Fox News network earlier on Friday morning – her fifth day as Trump’s chief spokesperson – Zacharia was asked whether she still has the confidence of the US president. “I’m standing here,” she replied.It comes as Zacharia, who describes herself as a lawyer, faces scrutiny over her professional background after admitting she did not pass the bar exam.On Thursday evening, the Fox host Sean Hannity grilled Zacharia about her first press briefing in which she read directly from notes and occasionally stumbled over her words for 14 minutes.“What happened?” Hannity – a close ally of Trump – asked Zacharia. “How did you feel it went personally?”Zacharia quickly defended herself, saying she had little time to prep between accepting the job and holding her first press briefing and then insisted the conservative Daily Mail, one of only three outlets she took questions from, was “not known to be a conservative outlet”.Pushback on Zacharia continued on Friday morning when the Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones said: “You know, Katie, it’s been a tough week for you. It’s not an easy job to be the press secretary, and you never want to be the story.Zacharia, a former conservative commentator, detailed the whirlwind sprint to install her as Trump’s new press secretary in an interview with the Guardian on Thursday. She replaces Karoline Leavitt, who left her role in August.Zacharia previously served as an adviser to Trump Media Group, which owns the president’s Truth Social platform, and also had a brief stint as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.Her introduction to the White House press corps has been rocky – between a press briefing criticized for being too short and allegations that she misrepresented herself as a lawyer.Zacharia, who graduated from Pepperdine University’s law school, had called herself a “lawyer”, and Trump identified Zacharia as an “attorney” when announcing her appointment. She had previously shared social media posts that also identified her as an “attorney”, which she defended on Hannity by saying “they were retweets”.But reports emerged this week revealing Zacharia never passed the bar exam, which she later confirmed. Zacharia has said she identified herself as a “lawyer”, not an “attorney”, to distinguish herself from a licensed legal adviser.“Why get into this long-drawn-out definition of the difference between a lawyer and an attorney? Because I don’t think most people see much of a distinction,” Hannity said.Trump told reporters on Friday that both Hannity and other Fox hosts had been “a little tough” on his new press secretary.“Sean [Hannity] was a little bit tough, and I saw Fox & Friends this morning; they were a little tough. She’s been treated, I would say, pretty nastily,” the president said.The US president said he was going to let Zacharia make the decision whether to stay or not. “Maybe it’s not for her,” Trump said, adding that he wanted her “to be happy”.