“She Could Barely Read”: Trump Team Trashes New Press Secretary

Katie Zacharia delivered her debut performance as White House press secretary just two days ago, but she’s already made enemies of her colleagues.

The 41-year-old appeared before the White House press corps for the first time on Tuesday, whereupon she stumbled her way through a wordy briefing, took three questions, and fled out of the room after just 14 minutes. Donald Trump was the first to defend her, telling reporters after the conference that he felt Zacharia was “very good.” The White House took a similar position, describing Zacharia’s delivery as “commanding.”

But a series of leaked text messages obtained by the Daily Mail revealed that the newly minted Trump official was getting torched by her administration coworkers before she even left the lectern.

“She looked as if she was handed a sheet of paper at the last minute and wasn’t prepared properly,” one insider said.

A senior administration official told the Mail that Zacharia’s performance wasn’t good enough.

“She should have gone on longer and had substantive answers ready,” the official said. “She could barely read.”

A senior member of the administration’s communications team said that Zacharia’s first briefing was “terrible on so many different levels.” Another official called it “embarrassing.”

Another source told the tabloid that they felt “badly for her” considering that Zacharia’s “kids and family [were] watching.”

But an aptitude for the job isn’t the only thing Zacharia lacks. The White House confirmed Thursday that, despite her resume and self-advertised legal credentials, the Pepperdine Caruso Law graduate never actually passed a state bar exam. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Zacharia sat for the California bar exam after she obtained her law degree, but she did not pass.

For years, Zacharia made a name for herself as a legal expert on conservative airways. Her LinkedIn also lists her as “general counsel” for a California-based organization run by longtime Trump ally Ric Grenell. The caveat: she shouldn’t have been able to do either without passing the bar.

President Donald Trump made a speech to first responders in the Rose Garden Thursday—and spent his time talking about “reskinning” the White House.

After rambling about the upcoming midterm elections and briefly thanking the first responders gathered there for lunch, the president quickly pivoted to describing his pet White House construction projects.

“It’s all perfect now. So we reskinned, basically. It’s a reskinning,” Trump said, looking around the Rose Garden like he’d never seen it before. “And that building is good to go for another 100 years, at least, actually. But even this, you see the, the top sections were—it was so bad I didn’t even like standing under it, the thing was all cracked and broken, all over the place. We put the sign up, solid brass, half-inch thick, as opposed to laminate. You ever see these laminate? They don’t want to spend the money on the brass so they have a piece of brass laminated, just about one-hundredth of an inch thick, and they put in on a piece of wood to save a lot of money.”

Trump, of course, has made no attempt to save money pursuing his vanity projects in the people’s house. Not only did he pave over the original Rose Garden to build a sterile patio (and to ostensibly make it easier for women wearing heels, he claimed Thursday), but he also renovated columns and porticos, repaved the driveway using white granite, covered the Oval Office in gaudy gold, gutted the Lincoln Bathroom, built and then rebuilt a new helipad, and demolished the East Wing to build a $600 million White House ballroom. The building has indeed been “reskinned”—in Trump’s own image.

A clinical psychologist recently signaled that the president’s endless obsession with his construction project might be a sign of cognitive decline.

Former Republican Representative Matt Gaetz has been sued in federal court by two women accusing him of sex trafficking.

The Miami Herald reports that the women allege that Gaetz, ex-Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, and former Florida state Representative Christopher Dorworth recruited young women and supplied them with drugs for sex between 2017 and 2019 while also transporting them across state lines. The two women filed a lawsuit Thursday in the middle district of Florida against all three men.

Gaetz denied the allegations in a statement.

“I look forward to taking the plaintiffs’ depositions because much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” Gaetz said. “The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance.”

The two women, named as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 in the lawsuit, were 20 and 22, respectively, when they met Gaetz in 2017. They allege that Greenberg, who is now serving an 11-year sentence in federal prison on multiple charges, including sex trafficking of a minor, recruited them at a time when they didn’t have a stable income.

Greenberg, Gaetz, and Dorworth had a system that preyed upon young women like them, paying for sex and plying them with controlled substances, the lawsuit alleges. Greenberg used the website SeekingArrangement.com (now just called Seeking) to find the women, introducing them to a circle of men that included Gaetz and Dorworth. The women were given drugs at parties and homes used for sex, according to the lawsuit.

Greenberg and Dorworth helped cover up Gaetz’s actions, according to the lawsuit, paying for trips to Miami, Las Vegas, the Florida Keys, and New York City for both of the plaintiffs, themselves, and other men.

“At the time of this venture, Gaetz was a sitting member of Congress, holding himself out to be one of President Donald J. Trump’s closest confidants and most loyal supporters,” the lawsuit states.

Jane Doe 1 says in the lawsuit that she saw Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old woman, fitting with the allegations that led to Gaetz’s resignation from the House and ultimately sank Gaetz’s nomination by President Trump to be attorney general months later. She also alleges that she was paid over $6,000, with Jane Doe 2 getting over $4,000 from Gaetz. The payment descriptions reportedly read “Being my friend,” “car deductible,” and “Love you.”

The wife of Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers is at gas stations in Detroit handing out $10 gas gift cards while begging people to vote for her husband. This is an illegal, desperate, and ironic move given that the spiking gas prices were directly caused by President Trump’s Iran war, which Rogers has supported wholeheartedly.

The Michigan Chronicle’s Sam Robinson spotted Rogers’s wife handing out the gift cards on Tuesday.

“[We’re just] talking to some folks that are struggling with this gas crisis. We’re all struggling with incredibly high gas prices,” she said. “And Mike knows this.” The $10 amount—a measly margin for someone trying to fill up their tank—is supposed to represent how much people would save with Rogers’s proposal to suspend the state gas tax.

This is straight-up bribery, and it has not been well received by those to Rogers’s left.

“Legalities aside, this is so ham-handed and cringy it cannot be the brainchild of any political professional,” Michigan political strategist Jeff Timmer wrote. “It screams ‘placating the panicked candidate and/or spouse’. Parks and Recreation Leslie Knope city council campaign optics.”

“$10????? Weak ass shit not even getting them to the westside and back,” a Detroit-based X account chimed in.

Gas in Michigan is $4.57 per gallon right now, nearly 25 cents above the national average. That high price is directly due to the Strait of Hormuz being closed, and the Strait of Hormuz is closed because Trump and Israel started bombing Iran eight months ago. And yet Rogers—and virtually every other Republican running for Congress next month—cannot bring himself to solidly oppose the war, even as the majority of Americans do.

Most polls have Rogers slightly trailing his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles could be facing the boot.

Donald Trump has reportedly called his allies to explore potential successors for his once-irreproachable “ice maiden,” Politico reported in its Playbook newsletter Thursday. The reviews of Wiles’s performance, apparently, are not good.

“She’s burned a lot of people,” a Republican operative close to the White House told Politico.

One senior elected Republican official who fielded Trump’s call told the digital newsroom that the president had raised “the first honest questions about Susie.”

Possible replacements include deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller or—as a left-field option—Randy Levine, the president of the New York Yankees, insiders told Politico. Other options extend to U.S. envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, real estate developer turned federal housing director Bill Pulte, and ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Still, Trump shied away from committing to the turnover, ardently defending Wiles in a statement.

“TOTAL FAKE NEWS Politico doesn’t care about facts, integrity, or honest journalism—it’s why I kicked them out of the White House!” the president told Politico. “Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest serving Chief of Staff—there is a reason for that. She has been with me since the beginning, is my trusted advisor, and has my COMPLETE confidence.”

Trump has resisted calls to fire his scandal-laden staffers throughout his second term, marking a stark contrast to the revolving door of his first administration. But people have come and gone, nonetheless.

By September, more than half of Trump’s original “A team”—approximately 56 percent—had departed, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. Four Cabinet positions have also turned over since Inauguration Day 2025, with former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard all being replaced.