White House chief of staff Susie Wiles helped arrange Katie Zacharia’s Fox News interview that went wrong the night before she was fired from her post five days after she was hired, according to a report
The former White House press secretary, Zacharia, 41, was fired from her job five days after she replaced Karoline Leavitt, who stepped down in August. Her second day on the job was marked by an awkward 14-minute press briefing that was widely criticised by both Trump’s allies and critics.
On Thursday, Fox News host Sean Hannity grilled Zacharia on air and questioned her legal credentials.
One unnamed source told Politico that her appearance on Fox News was a sanctioned hit and that she was not Wiles’s the preferred choice for the role .
Zacharia’s appointment was reportedly not signed off by Wiles, and her hiring was presented as a fait accompli the day before she was announced as the press secretary.
A senior white house official said, “Susie and Sean do talk, but Susie did not need to feed her to Sean or anybody else. It’s not her style.”
“And Hannity wasn’t the nail in her coffin; her hit [on Fox & Friends] this morning was, as well as her weird answer on being a lawyer,” the senior White House official said.
The White House, however, said that Wiles’s purported involvement in the set up was speculation.
“All of this breathless speculation is just that— speculation. And it’s fiction that’s not even creative,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement. “Katie took on a very important job, and she will continue to support the President as she transitions to a new role. She is an amazing teammate and tremendous talent.”
A Fox News insider also pushed back on the idea of a sanctioned hit
“It was clear by the end of this week that she did herself in with her own performance. If you can’t answer simple questions about your credentials, that speaks volumes,” they said.
After the ouster of Susie Wiles, whom Trump calls the Ice Maiden, she herself faced rumours of being let go along with names of potential successors.
Trump, however, dismissed the rumours. “Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest-serving Chief of Staff — there is a reason for that,” he told Politico earlier this week. “She has been with me since the beginning, is my trusted advisor, and has my COMPLETE confidence.”
