Katie Zacharia flunks her first test, struggles badly through her first White House briefing

Shortly before Katie Zacharia held her first briefing as the new White House press secretary, MS NOW’s Peter Alexander spoke to a former high-level aide who worked for Donald Trump. This person offered a prediction: “I think she is going to be a train wreck.”

The prediction proved prescient soon after.

To be sure, the low expectations surrounding Zacharia were hardly unreasonable. After all, the former conservative commentator is perhaps best known for peddling unhinged conspiratorial nonsense via social media. It’s not as if she was poised to appear behind the podium with a deep reservoir of credibility and respect.

But Zacharia nevertheless failed to clear a low bar.

Early on, while trying to talk about how awesome the president’s awesomeness is, the new press secretary appeared to struggle to read her own notes, sounding a bit like a student doing a book report on a book she hadn’t read.

As the briefing continued, Zacharia fielded just three questions — calling on correspondents from a conservative website, a conservative newspaper and a conservative cable network — and didn’t know the answer to the only policy question she faced. In another unfortunate moment, she also mixed up her husband and the president.

After less than 15 minutes, the press secretary abruptly ended the briefing.

Predictably, White House officials claimed the briefing was a triumph. The president characterized her performance as “very good,” and White House communications director Steven Cheung claimed she was “tremendous.”

At least, that’s what the White House said publicly. Speaking more candidly, two White House officials told MS NOW they were severely unimpressed, with one official saying, “Getting behind the podium is tough, but she got off on the wrong foot.” The official added, “She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record,” referring to Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s communications director for 11 days in 2017.