(Dobbs) And Now She’s Press Secretary to the PresidentHis newest press secretary has never been a slave to the truth.
In her very first White House briefing yesterday, President Trump’s new press secretary Katie Zacharia might have been rough at the edges, but what she showed us was, she can lie with the best of them. We got our glimpse of the future. It already looks like a repeat of the past. Her predecessors dating back almost ten years to Trump’s first day in the Oval Office— Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, Kayleigh McEnany, Karoline Leavitt— were real polished, real pro’s. They could look the press corps in the eyes and tell flat-out lies and never blush. A visibly nervous Zacharia looked down at her scripted notes far more than she looked up at her judgmental audience, but she still was able to launch a lineup of whoppers: • When she talked about the president’s rallies, she told the White House reporters, “Attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hardworking Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump and Republicans.” This contradicts accounts from reporters and pictures from photographers who actually cover those rallies, where many seats in many arenas are empty. This one, from Trump’s “midterm convention” last month in Dallas, is from The New York Times. But Zacharia has learned the Trump culture fast: “Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” It also puts her on a par with Trump’s very first press secretary, Spicer, who hadn’t been on the clock for a whole day in 2017 when he told the briefing room after the inauguration, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” Except it wasn’t. Unlike Barack Obama’s inauguration where photos show the National Mall was full, there were gaping gaps at Trump’s, as this Reuters photograph documents from the top of The Washington Monument. The photo comparisons could not be disputed…. unless you were Sean Spicer. • When Zacharia talked about the “trillions of dollars in new investments” the president claims to have won for America— from Amazon, from Apple, from the United Arab Emirates, and others— she forgot to say, somewhere between few and none have materialized. • When she talked about how the administration has “uncovered over $260 billion of fraud, stopped $72 billion of fraud annually through administrative actions, and recovered $58.9 billion through indictments, settlements and civil monetary penalties,” she was an oracle of omissions. Analysts have debunked these claims. Some were underway under President Biden and others are just intentional inflations of fact. • When she talked about how her new job would affect her family, she told the briefing room, “President Trump is the most family friendly president we’ve ever had. He has hired more women with families.” Evidently the new press secretary hasn’t yet attended a meeting with Trump’s cabinet. But it’s no wonder she would lie about Trump. She lies about herself. When Trump announced her appointment last Friday, he said she is “an attorney.” Why wouldn’t he think she is? Her listing on LinkedIn says it in black and white. So does her biography on Fox. Judd Legum, who writes the newsletter Popular Information, did his homework and found at least eighteen appearances on Fox where she was identified as a lawyer. “I’m a lawyer” she told Fox host Greg Kelly only a week ago. But yesterday as he was heading for Marine One to fly off to campaign in Alaska, someone asked the president, “Where did she pass the bar exam? Which state?” He turned to her and asked the same: “Which state.” Her answer? “When I moved to China.” She elaborated in a later interview with NewsNation: “I practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials.” “All the appropriate credentials?” She did get a law degree at Pepperdine University in California but she’s not listed as ever having passed the bar there. Not in California, not in Texas, not in Washington DC, the two other places she has lived. Judd Legum tried all fifty states and found no bar listings anywhere. The director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham University School of Law, Bruce Green, told The Washington Post, “A law school graduate is just that, a law school graduate.” He said someone is actually a lawyer only after being admitted to practice law, meaning, passing the bar. And as for practicing in China, where she moved with her husband after he got a financial job in Beijing? “She could not have passed the PRC (People’s Republic of China) bar exam,” according to professor Donald Clarke of George Washington University Law School, “since you have to be a PRC national to take it.” But the president’s newest press secretary has never been a slave to the truth. She has posted or reposted nutty conspiracy theories for the past few years, like this one about former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton and chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign John Podesta. “Pedo” means “pedophile.” She has long gone big on the “Pizzagate” fiction that political and entertainment celebrities were pedophiles and cannibals who ran a child sex trafficking ring under a pizza restaurant in Washington. And now she’s press secretary to the president. Share Zacharia told reporters during yesterday’s first briefing that her goal was to “amplify, multiply, and expand upon President Trump’s incredible agenda for the American people.” She even said it twice. Now I’m more worried than ever. © 2026 Greg Dobbs |