Dem
54
Ties
1
GOP
45
Most readers will have heard the news by now, but newly minted White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia is now former White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia, as she was cashiered by Donald Trump yesterday.
Strike one, of course, was her disastrously bad performance in her first, and what proved to be her only, press conference with the White House press corps. By all accounts, Donald Trump was not initially bothered by it. He knows that this kind of thing is not easy, and that it takes some time to learn the ropes. However, he did what he does, and asked all of his various telephone buddies about it. The scathing reviews he heard from others might have caused him to alter his initial assessment.
Strike two, and three, was Zacharia's having claimed she was a lawyer when she is not. And when she got caught in her lie, she decided to give the whole nation an object lesson in "O! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." When it was pointed out she'd never been licensed to practice in the U.S., she claimed she took the bar in China. When it was then pointed out that was not possible, she said she'd misheard the question. Then she said that she did sit for the bar, but she didn't really intend to pass it, because she was too busy at the time planning for her wedding. She also claimed she had not lied, because she only referred to herself as a "lawyer" and not an "attorney." Or maybe it was an "attorney" and not a "lawyer." It's a bit of meaningless verbal sophistry that people who graduated law school but did not pass the bar engage in so as to obscure the truth about their credentials.
Trump does not have a problem with people lying, but they damn well better not lie to him. And they better not make him an unwitting participant in perpetuating those lies. The most obvious parallel is Michael Flynn, who lasted only 22 days as NSA because he duped members of the administration, most notably then-VP Mike Pence, into repeating his lies about not meeting with members of the Russian government. Zacharia might well have survived the disastrous first press conference, possibly by adopting the Stephanie Grisham technique of never, ever holding press conferences. But the lie about being a lawyer looked to be unsurvivable, and it was.
According to much of the media, the "big deal" here is that the White House will have no primary spokesperson for most or all of the time between now and the election. In fact, this is not a big deal at all. Trump effectively acts as his own White House Press Secretary. And if and when the Republicans get smacked at the polls in a couple of weeks, the lack of a White House Press Secretary between October 17 and November 3 will not be among the 50 most important reasons for their misfortune.
The real "big deal" here, such as it is, is that we have yet another reminder that this White House is sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. It is not difficult to confirm whether someone is actually a lawyer or not. And yet, nobody even bothered to take the 2 minutes to check before announcing Zacharia to the world. It's no wonder that so many members of the administration are unqualified, unprepared, corrupt, etc., because nobody bothers to look for red flags.
The other issue here is that everyone will now have to figure out exactly how long a Scaramucci is, and how long a Zacharia is. The former lasted for 10 days, which were spread across 11 calendar days. The latter lasted for 4 days, which were spread across 5 calendar days. So, a Zacharia is either 0.4 Scaramuccis, or else 0.454 Scaramuccis. We tend to take the view that 0.4 is more correct, but we suppose reasonable minds can disagree. (Z)