New White House press secretary Katie Zacharia was eviscerated after her first briefing on Tuesday, and critics blasted her for spending more time talking about herself, her husband and being a “working mom” than about American soldiers in the Middle East or the economy. Meanwhile, Longtime reporter Peter Alexander called her out for violating the law on her second day on the job.
On MS NOW, host Stephanie Ruhle cut from Zacharia reading her opening statement in less than three minutes.
Former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney said the one good thing about President Donald Trump is that she was far less engaging than he is.
“The problem is it’s not red meat, it’s pink slime,” veteran newsman John Avlon said of Zacharia. “I mean, there’s no substance here. Even with the stuff that’s designed to rally the base, because when it’s simply red and prepackaged, it has no resonance, it has no credibility. And she said, oh, he’s his own best spokesperson, which we expect, right? But that’s because her job is not to make news, apparently, or to communicate to the journalists in the room. It is to basically defer to the president and parrot the party line.”
Vaughn Hillyard quickly pointed out the easy question from Fox News’ Peter Doocy about whether the U.S. would continue to share intelligence with Ukraine as the war rages on.
“That’s a very basic question,” he said. “She didn’t have an answer. That basic answer should be, ‘yes.'”
Alexander said he’s outlasted nine of the last press secretaries and that his first call will be to the Office of Special Counsel to ask whether Zacharia’s podium remarks qualify as a Hatch Act violation for promoting Republican politics and campaigns.
The Hatch Act outlines no punishments; previously, presidents with ethics guidelines would ask a person to step down or fire them, but that hasn’t happened in the Trump administrations.
“You’ll remember, past press secretaries would often go out of their way to say they didn’t want to violate the Hatch Act,” Alexander recalled. “They didn’t want to be politicking as their duty as a civil servant there. As a representative of this administration, you’re not allowed to do that absent the vice president and the president. She obviously did it without solicitation. She offered it up a series of political statements in her first comments.”
His second point was that no one asked one of the questions that is generally posed to a press secretary on their first briefing: “Do you view your primary role here as speaking for the president or promoting his interests, or are you committed to providing the unvarnished truth to the American people?”
A distant question has recently been asked about whether they’ll pledge not to lie to the press.
One White House official already told MS NOW, “Getting behind the podium is tough, but she got off on the wrong foot. She needs to get much better fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record.” It’s a reference to Anthony Scaramucci, who worked at the Trump White House for 11 days.
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