Trump's New Megaphone Can't Pass a Bar Exam

The most important job in the White House is being the government's voice to the American people. The person now holding it has never passed a bar exam in any state, and the White House's only proof of her credentials is a post on the president's social media.

"The idea of not spending evenings with my kid, kids are completely unacceptable, so my president, err excuse me, my husband, that's a good one."

— White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia, first briefing, day one

The briefing started fifteen minutes late and lasted about fourteen. Eight of those minutes were a scripted eulogy of the president: record crowd sizes in Youngstown, the "America First agenda," "the most family friendly president we've ever had." She took three questions. A Breitbart reporter got the first one, from what the White House now calls the new media seat. Fox News' Peter Doocy got a second. When a policy question came up about intelligence sharing with Ukraine, the answer was, "I'll have to get back to you on that."

Then she walked out. "The president is heading to Alaska so people could ask him questions directly," she told the room.

That was Tuesday. That is now the entire press operation of the United States government.

Katie Zacharia, 41, is the 37th White House press secretary and a communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, the company that runs Truth Social. She is a regular commentator on Fox News and Newsmax, has appeared on CNN, spent a brief stint earlier this year as a spokeswoman for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and worked on the president's campaign in swing states, by his account. CNN's Brian Stelter put it plainly: she is "the closest you can get to a Fox News contributor without actually being on the payroll of Fox." She is a mother of four, and her family is in California, which is probably why the husband line slipped out.

The job had been vacant since Karoline Leavitt announced her departure on August 12 and left on August 27. On Friday, Trump announced the choice on Truth Social, where he does most of his governing, and described Zacharia as "a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning." On Monday she officially started. On Tuesday she took the podium. The new press operation of the United States government lasted fourteen minutes.

For most of the history of this office, the press secretary was a career communicator who had covered the White House for years before running it. Now the pipeline runs the other way: cover the movement, defend the leader, get the podium.

The strange part is the lawyer.

Zacharia has presented herself as an attorney. She has appeared on air as a legal expert. Her LinkedIn lists a JD from Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, which she received in 2011, and she has described herself as "general counsel" of a California nonprofit. But when Judd Legum of Popular Info checked the bar association databases of all fifty states and Washington, D.C., he found that she is not a member of any of them. She has never passed the bar anywhere.

When the White House was asked for evidence of her legal credentials, it did not send a bar certificate. It sent a link to Trump's Truth Social post, in which he called her "a distinguished Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, an attorney."

Translation: the government's entire credential file for its lawyer-claiming spokeswoman is a social media post by the man she is appointed to defend.

Asked on Tuesday about the gap, she said she passed the bar when she "moved to China." Her LinkedIn says she lived in China from 2011 to 2013 as a law associate for an international children's rights group. That is a plausible answer, except that China does not allow foreigners to sit its bar exam or practice law. The credential she claimed on day one was one that, by her own account, she was not permitted to take.

The lawyer claim is only the first item on a list.

Over the weekend, Brendan Hartnett of The Bulwark recovered her deleted posts from the Internet Archive. In June 2025, after White House adviser Stephen Miller argued that sanctuary cities were engaged in a "criminal conspiracy," she called for the United States to "suspend habeas corpus." She argued the federal government should "take over all of California." She called Bill Gates "a eugenicist." She shared a post claiming that eight in ten women had a miscarriage after getting the COVID vaccine. On Truth Social she amplified Pizzagate, the debunked theory that a Washington pizzeria was the site of a Democratic child sex ring. That theory inspired an armed man to open fire inside the restaurant in 2016. (It has no basement.) She has also claimed that the abortion pill mifepristone "came straight from Nazi Germany."

Most of it was deleted from her old X account sometime before she ascended to the most important podium in Washington.

The press secretary is the person who decides what the government says. Her last act before the job was to decide what the government had said. The podium and the eraser are the same tool.

The timing is the other half of the story.

The New York Times notes that Zacharia inherits the podium at a moment when the administration is fighting in court over its effort to ban three news organizations from White House grounds, when increasing numbers of Republican candidates are distancing themselves from the president before the midterms, and when the government has been locking press corps out of the pool, the Pentagon, and the president himself. The press briefing is the last place in this administration where a reporter can stand up and ask a question.

Her biggest announcement of the day was not policy. It was personnel: the administration had asked Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign after reports that she sought a $100,000 credit card payment from a Republican donor in exchange for access. Guilfoyle, the ex-fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., formally resigned that afternoon and denied the allegations.

A White House source told MS NOW that the debut was rough. "She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she'll break Scaramucci's record." The 2017 press secretary who set that record lasted ten days. The New Republic was gentler. The debut was, it wrote, "so bad it made Karoline Leavitt look like Cicero."

In this White House, the tenure benchmark for a press secretary is not a successful term. It is a ten day disaster.

The press secretary job exists for one reason: so the American people can get answers. On day one, the new incumbent answered three, offered the government's only credential for itself as a quote from the president, and told the room that if they wanted more, they could go to Alaska.

She has never passed a bar exam in any of the fifty states. She does have the government's only megaphone. The rest of America gets to watch which one matters.