{"id":6221,"date":"2026-11-09T16:10:50","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T16:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=6221"},"modified":"2026-11-09T16:10:52","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T16:10:52","slug":"the-gendered-selection-and-removal-of-the-white-house-press-secretary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=6221","title":{"rendered":"The Gendered Selection \u2013 and Removal \u2013 of the White House Press Secretary\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Women do not last long in the Trump administration. This is not a shock for those of us able to observe the manosphere culture dominating the White House. For Katie Zacharia, the latest victim of a short-lived political career inside, the realisation that she was not valued by a misogynist institution came quickly.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zacharia lasted just five days, a length of time even Liz Truss would be ashamed of. Her removal came after several days of intense media backlash following her disastrous first briefing, where she spoke for 12 minutes, used talking points from her notebook, and at one particularly painful moment referred to her husband as the president.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media attention was particularly focused on her ambiguous responses around her legal qualifications, after she responded that she passed the bar \u2018when I moved to China\u2019. Zacharia, as was quickly discovered, has never passed the bar.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her employment in the job came after the resignation of Karoline Leavitt, another Trump devotee and particularly talented at spinning the whims of an erratic president. What is observable at this point is the similarities between the two women \u2013 similarities which seem to be the standard for a modern MAGA woman.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacqueline Maley<\/a> describes this as a \u2018looksmaxxed version of a heightened feminine aesthetic that owes much to our beloved Barbie\u2019. Aside from the ex-Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the vast majority of women in this administration seem to fit a strict (and somewhat Aryan in its appearance) code for their appearances. Zacharia\u2019s subscription to this aesthetic did not go unnoticed by the media, with The Times<\/a> headline reading \u2018Another MAGA Blonde Bombshell\u2019. The Telegraph <\/a>suggested she hid behind \u2018her impressive mane of blonde hair\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true that Trump\u2019s preference for a cosmetically enhanced blonde woman is almost comical. Yet it appears to me to be a reductive move for our major media outlets to criticise the women close to political power for this. This is exactly what the broader MAGA structure does: limiting women to their looks. Women in positions of power threaten the techbro power structures that figures like Marco Rubio have cultivated. If they look like the kind of woman you might desire, they seem less threatening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zacharia is the latest in a long line of women who discovered the hard way how they were valued by MAGA. Zacharia herself managed to enact such a firing in her first briefing, discussing the removal of the ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Guilfoyle was previously engaged to Trump Jr. and apparently used her post in Greece to hustle for cash. Other names include Pam Bondi, removed after her mishandling of the Epstein files. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, former labour secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, former national intelligence director, similarly were fired. All have been replaced by men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zacharia\u2019s removal, alongside the removal of these other women, are, in my opinion, justified if you take their actions out of the context of the present administration. Put them back in, and it becomes another story when compared to their male colleagues.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who can forget \u2018signal gate\u2019, an indication of the then National Security Advisor Mike Waltz\u2019s incompetence, where the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was added to a group chat containing highly classified military information. This group also contained JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and numerous other high-ranking officials. Waltz is now the US ambassador to the United Nations. FBI director Kash Patel is the current subject of scrutiny in lieu of reports around heavy drinking on the job, and the \u2018Border Czar\u2019 Tom Homan was caught on audio in 2024 accepting $50,000<\/a> of cash in a plastic bag. Both remain in their jobs.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boys club of MAGA picked Zacharia as its latest victim. She is a stark reminder that an institution which may appear to include women is, in fact, a highly misogynistic culture, where women must adhere to a certain beauty standard to be successful: and this is still not enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image: White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia holds first press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House by Andrea Hanks for Official White House Photos, 2026, Work of the Public Domain, File:Press Secretary Katie Zacharia holds first press briefing in the James S Brady Press Briefing Room, October 13, 2026 (P20261013AH-0521).jpg – Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Rhyme Elson <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Women do not last long in the Trump administration. This is not a shock for those of us able to observe the manosphere <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":6223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,67,30,1,414],"tags":[108,218],"class_list":["post-6221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender","category-gender-2","category-politics","category-uncategorized","category-us-politics","tag-gender","tag-us-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6221"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6225,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6221\/revisions\/6225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}