I was days from turning 23 when I became a congressional press secretary. My boss’s previous press secretary had been fired on the spot, and I was pulled from our district office in southwestern Pennsylvania and dropped onto Capitol Hill the next day.
The timing could not have been worse. My boss was about to become the first House member reprimanded in a decade, and the press was circling. I had no idea what a press secretary actually did. I delivered my first statement on the ethics investigation like a deer in the headlights, pale as a sheet, and a friend in Pittsburgh mocked me for weeks after seeing it on the news.
That memory came back this morning as I watched Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, at her first briefing. She was there for 14 minutes, and I’m being generous calling it a briefing.
Seven years on the Hill taught me two golden rules: be honest with the press and speak with authority. Zacharia managed neither. She looked unsteady, and the statements kept coming, one falsehood after another. Everything was “historic.”
Her “historic” takes started with the midterms, which she said had the “energy and excitement never seen before in the history of midterms, thanks to President Trump.” I laughed at first, but then thought she might be right. His historically low poll numbers are making history.
She also boasted of historic attendance at his rallies, saying, “attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hard-working Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump.” According to analysis and media reports, from Alabama to Ohio to Tennessee to Texas, rows of empty seats and crowds drifting out mid-speech are the real highs. My guess is she’ll get a call from her predecessor Sean Spicer, telling her to go easy on crowd sizes.
Then came the claim that the administration has uncovered $260 billion in fraud. If that’s the number, the estimates of what Trump and his family have historically grifted out of government must be badly understated, because the only fraud I can see being uncovered is coming from inside the White House.
She said she has wanted to work with the president for a very long time. I’d remind her that she has already worked inside the Trump administration and for Trump-affiliated organizations for “a very long time.”
Then came the questions, which she took only from Fox News, Breitbart and the Daily Mail. It reminded me of the soft-opening games major college football programs schedule against overmatched opponents, commonly called cupcake games. Today, Zacharia did a cupcake briefing. It also made me think of Helen Thomas, the legendary UPI correspondent who held presidents of both parties to account for decades. She is surely spinning in her grave.
The one moment of levity came when Zacharia referred to her husband as “my president,” and the room chuckled. It recalled the story, reported years ago, of Condoleezza Rice allegedly calling George W. Bush her husband. So, snaps and claps for Zacharia for not being the first to confuse the two.