A Scaramucci has often been used as a tongue-in-cheek measure of time in politics, particularly in the Trump era.
Page B43From§Eachthe morning edition — 22 October 2026
The predecessor who quit the podium now hires whoever replaces the successor who couldn't hold it five days.
As it ran on the front
Katie Zacharia was born into the job of White House press secretary on Monday the twelfth of October, named to end a briefing blackout the Hill had clocked at forty days. She died in the job on Friday the sixteenth. Fox News counts the span at five days, Monday through Friday, and the house keeps Fox's count.
She is survived by three different answers to one plain question: where is she licensed to practice law. The last of the three, preserved in the Guardian's own video, was an admission that she had never passed the bar exams she had claimed to hold.…
…(cont) She was preceded in the job, months earlier, by Karoline Leavitt, who left the same podium, by the Guardian's account, to focus on her family. The seat then sat empty the forty days the Hill had printed, before Zacharia was named to fill it.
On the sixteenth, the Washington Examiner reported that the President had left the door open to Zacharia's departure while reaffirming his chief of staff, Susie Wiles. The Guardian ran its search piece the same day, noting that the exit came only months after Leavitt's own resignation.
On the twenty-second, Fox News reported that Leavitt is the one now helping the President find his next press secretary. Not an outside hire conducting the search — the person who held the same podium before Zacharia, answered the same kind of questions, and left it, now screening whoever takes the podium after the one who couldn't hold it five days.
None of this requires an adjective. The office that exists to tell the public what its government is doing is being staffed in a closed loop, by the person who already walked away from it once. The arrangement is penny-ante as Washington arrangements go — one office, one rehire, one favor — but the turnover is clocked in business days, and the search for the third occupant of that podium is now being run by the first.
In lieu of flowers, the administration is asked to publish whichever law license it is checking this time, before the podium, not after.
“You get rid of a forty-day blackout by hiring somebody who can't settle on a state where she's allowed to practice law, and when that falls apart in five days, you don't go outside for the replacement — you call back the last one who already quit the same podium. That's not a search, that's a rotation, and the public still never gets a straight answer out of any of it.”
“Karoline brings real continuity to this process — institutional knowledge, somebody who already knows where the podium is, who the regulars in the room are, who — I mean, she's the one who walked off that same podium four months ago. Continuity. That's still the word I'm using, I think.”
Earlier in this story
The receipts
President Donald Trump made two pieces of White House personnel news on Friday, by transitioning Katie Zacharia’s out of her newly-entered press secretary role and throwing his support behind chief of staff Susie Wiles. Zacharia has been lambasted for the rocky start to her tenure, which began on Monday, following an awkward opening…
Anthony Scaramucci is weighing in on Katie Zacharia's first briefing as White House press secretary, quipping that the clock is ticking on her tenure. "The clock is running," Scaramucci wrote on X on Tuesday, shortly after Zacharia wrapped her inaugural briefing at the White House as press secretary. "Thus far 1/11th of a Scaramucci,"…
Karoline Leavitt says she's helping Trump find a new press secretary after Katie Zacharia lasted just five days in the demanding White House role.
President Donald Trump tapped Katie Zacharia, a conservative commentator and communications adviser for Trump Media and Technology Group, to serve as his next White House press secretary. Zacharia will succeed Karoline Leavitt, who left the White House in August. Her appointment comes less than a month before the 2026 midterm elections…
Katie Zacharia's gaffe-filled stint came as US President Donald Trump flies around the country trying to boost Republican candidates ahead of midterm elections.
Her abrupt firing after just five days reopened the contest for one of the Trump administration’s most prominent roles The White House is without a press secretary again after the ousting of Katie Zacharia, just five days into her appointment as Donald Trump’s spokesperson. Zacharia’s departure comes just months after Karoline Leavitt…
A White House Press official said Friday that Secretary Katie Zacharia was "let go" from her role after US President Donald Trump signaled she was on her way out, a week after he picked her for the post. Zacharia's credentials as an attorney had come under scrutiny and she admitted to not having passed the bar in an interview with Fox…
Zacharia hosted widely panned first briefing on Tuesday and faced scrutiny after admitting she didn’t pass bar exam Donald Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, was fired on Friday, just five days after she assumed the role, according to a White House official. Zacharia confirmed her departure from the White House on Friday…
In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, the new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, admitted that she did not pass the bar exam, after facing scrutiny about her legal career before becoming the top spokesperson for Trump. Zacharia had previously said she practiced law before entering politics, and Trump had described her as…
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This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.