Questions over WH press secy. Zacharia's claim she's a lawyer

[0:00] It is day three on the job for the new White House Press Secretary Katie Zakaria. [0:03] She has only had the one press briefing, but the online memes which it has spawned are numerous. [0:09] One White House insider called her first briefing brutal. [0:12] Here's just part of it. [0:15] I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me. [0:22] I have wanted to work for him for a very long time. [0:26] He had a historic one-day war, and now we have a booming economy [0:31] and a great relationship with Venezuela. [0:35] Enthusiastic, hard-working Americans are lining up and packing arenas [0:41] to support President Trump and Republicans. [0:47] It's not hard to see why. [0:49] The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable, [0:55] so my president, excuse me, my husband, that's a good one. [0:59] To the question on, the president will be back on Thursday, [1:03] and that's what I will answer. [1:05] I'll leave it there. [1:07] Well, it's something that she said after the briefing yesterday [1:09] that continues to raise questions today. [1:12] She claimed to be a lawyer, and in announcing her appointment as press secretary, [1:15] President Trump called her an attorney. [1:16] He was asked about that yesterday by reporters. [1:19] You passed the bar exam. [1:25] Which state? [1:26] What did you tell us? [1:28] Where did you pass the bar exam? [1:33] When she moved to China, was what she said. [1:38] When I moved to China, she said, [1:40] it turns out only Chinese citizens can take their version of the bar exam, [1:44] and you can't take an American state bar exam while residing in China. [1:47] So that's a confusing answer. [1:49] I want to bring to CNN's Zach Wolf. [1:52] So is she licensed to practice law in any of the 50 states? [1:56] I assume she does have a law degree, right? [1:59] She does. [2:00] She went to Pepperdine. [2:00] She has a law degree. [2:01] She's still active in the school there, you know, on the dean's council. [2:05] But there's no evidence that she passed a bar exam. [2:08] It seems like if she had taken one, the White House would simply have told us that [2:11] at this point. [2:13] And specifically in California, there's no record of her ever taking the bar exam. [2:18] And interestingly, in that state where she lived, it's actually illegal, [2:21] as it is in many other states, to present yourself as an attorney or a lawyer. [2:26] She's used both the term attorney and lawyer online and social media to describe herself. [2:31] And it can be punishable by by prison time or, you know, a fine that the there's been [2:38] a complaint raised by a watchdog group today asking for the state bar of California to [2:43] investigate whether, you know, there's anything untoward that happened here. [2:48] But it's possible because of that state's privacy laws that we'll never know the results [2:52] of any any kind of investigation like that. [2:55] I mean, it brings to mind the Republican attacks on the Michigan Senate candidate, [2:58] Abdul El-Sayed, who has a doctor of medicine degree from Columbia University, [3:02] but is not a licensed practicing physician. [3:04] He's worked in public health. [3:06] His opponent, Mike Rogers, has said that El-Sayed is not really a doctor. [3:10] What is actually pertinent in both these situations and what is just semantics? [3:16] Well, I mean, that has become a huge deal in that Michigan race. [3:19] And in a debate recently, Rogers called him a con man, essentially, [3:23] for presenting himself as a doctor. [3:25] El-Sayed can call himself a doctor. [3:27] He did go to medical school in the same way that Zachariah went to law school. [3:32] The semantics are a little bit different in how you can present, you know, what you call yourself. [3:36] But they are just that semantics. [3:38] I think the larger point here is that El-Sayed needs to convince every Michigan voter [3:42] that he is a legitimate person, that he needs to be considered, you know, to change health insurance. [3:48] That's like his main topic. [3:50] He works in health, whereas she needs has an audience of one, effectively Trump. [3:56] And you saw that double take he did there when she said something about China after he was asked where she went to law school. [4:03] So clearly that was news to him where it appeared to be in the moment. [4:07] Do you even know what she meant by that? [4:10] No. [4:10] And they did say afterwards, she did say afterwards to reporters that she had, you know, completed some sort of necessary, you know, credentialing to work in China. [4:20] And she's referred to that work as a corporate lawyer. [4:22] But as you said, it's illegal to, you know, for a foreigner to be a lawyer in China. [4:26] So there's been very little forthcoming on this. [4:29] And we'll just have to see what happens next. [4:32] All right. [4:32] Zach Wolf, appreciate it. [4:33] Thanks. [4:33] Now back with the panel. [4:35] An odd way to start once a very, very, very rocky start. [4:39] And by the way, a White House press secretary doesn't need a J.D. [4:42] They don't need to be a lawyer. [4:43] So this is becoming almost this side story that is not what you want to be driving headlines after really kind of bombing in your first press briefing. [4:50] She wouldn't likely get any clients off of her performance on the podium. [4:54] But I think that she really has one more shot to go out there in front of the press corps, command the room, command the facts, make some news and prove she could do this job. [5:01] Or she's not going to make it past the Scaramucci threshold. [5:04] Yeah. [5:04] I mean, Scott, I know you said she deserves some some grace. [5:07] Should they have put her out or should she have gone out there like that? [5:10] Yeah, I might have waited, honestly. [5:12] They actually, interestingly, had some news to announce. [5:14] I mean, they were firing Guilfoyle. [5:17] And I think if I had been doing it, I might have. [5:18] Which the lead was sort of buried on that one. [5:20] Yeah, I might have just walked out there and said, look, I've got I've got some news for you today. [5:23] We fired the ambassador and the president's headed to Alaska and we're going out to the chopper. [5:27] See ya. [5:27] And, you know, that probably would have been a fine way to do it. [5:29] But look, you know, hindsight's always 20-20 on these things. [5:33] Everybody can sit around and second guess it. [5:34] It's one of the hardest jobs in the world. [5:36] She's a lovely person and and she's got this big opportunity. [5:40] My advice would simply be take a few days, get to know the building, talk to the key players, really get briefed up on the issues. [5:46] Because the next time you walk out there, you don't want to walk out there feeling any butterflies. [5:49] You want to walk out there feeling in full command of the issues and what you plan to see. [5:53] This was really a fail. I mean, I don't understand how that happened, because when in any White House, when you have a new press secretary, there is a lot of preparation. [6:04] There is a lot of there are mock ups and run throughs and murder boards. [6:07] And every day, the press secretary, before they present, spends three, four hours with their staff getting questions. [6:14] By the way, what's a murder board for those who are watching? [6:16] Oh, I'm sorry. [6:17] A little alarmed. [6:17] It sounds a little grim. [6:19] It sounds a little grim. [6:21] No, it's where you get really hard questions and you respond to them. [6:24] You have people in the office asking you hard questions. [6:26] Yes, yes. [6:26] The questions that you anticipate. [6:27] You're role playing it. [6:28] Exactly. [6:29] And that's that's how press secretaries prepare for these sessions. [6:34] Clearly, that wasn't done here. [6:37] You know, maybe she was pushed out. [6:39] But if you know someone in the White House should have said, hey, let's make sure that she's prepped before we throw her out here. [6:46] CNN's K-Files reporting that she has a history of conspiracy laden social media posts. [6:50] And one she writes, the radical left Hollywood elitists are sick pedo cannibals. [6:54] This changed my mind in another. [6:57] She shared a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton's campaign chair with the hashtag pedo podesta, which was part of a whole QAnon conspiracy thing. [7:05] Obviously, baseless claim. [7:07] Do you have concerns? [7:09] Yeah, look, what this says is sort of there's a chaos dynamic now. [7:13] This is someone who would never have passed vetting in any Republican or Democrat White House. [7:18] You would never let someone come in with those kind of statements out on the public record. [7:22] So it suggests a White House that is not functioning the same way anymore. [7:26] For the voters now three weeks out, I think it's demoralizing to Republican voters, honestly, to see chaos moment after chaos moment. [7:35] And I think a lot of people see these kind of things and it just tells them to stay home. [7:40] Meanwhile, Democrats look at this and they feel more justified. [7:43] This is profoundly unpresidential. [7:46] And there was no way she was going to be prepared. [7:49] If that's the way she thinks about the world, there's no way she belongs at that podium. [7:54] And think about it. [7:54] Heading into the midterms, this is one of the most powerful bully pulpits on the planet is the White House briefing pulpit. [7:59] And what she should have done is spent, you know, hours preparing. [8:02] Kayleigh McEnany would prepare for three or four hours. [8:04] She'd meet with the National Security Council with different components of the West Wing. [8:08] I believe Caroline did the same. [8:09] And this is somewhere where you can drive a message. [8:11] Like, a Trump press secretary is very different than a more traditional one. [8:14] But your job is to go out there, fight with the press, and try to land the president's message for that day. [8:19] She just doesn't seem up to that baseline task. [8:22] And that's what makes me wonder, what was the vetting? [8:24] What was the interview process? [8:25] What did they think they were signing up for in hiring her? [8:28] Who decides? [8:28] I mean, is it basically the president who chooses? [8:31] The reporting seems to say it was the president and that Susie Wiles was a little bit surprised the chief of staff. [8:36] But I don't know that independently. [8:38] I mean, this person does answer to the president. [8:40] I mean, it's one of the top advisory positions. [8:43] It just so happens it's also a very public-facing position. [8:45] It's one of the few White House people you actually, you know, get to know because they're on your television most days of the week. [8:51] I think it's also possible that we're spending a lot more time obsessing over this than the average voter. [8:58] No, than the average voter. [8:59] No, I don't think the average voter cares about this. [9:01] But the reason we should be focused on it is only because it does reflect a level of chaos that, as Bill mentioned, the process of how she was selected, the process of how she was prepared, is emblematic of the kind of chaotic operational situation we've seen over the last, particularly over the last several weeks. [9:23] I mean, the secretary of defense announces a public execution, no evidence that he told the White House that he was going to do that and so on. [9:32] And these are cautionary notes, and it's going to get harder, you know, if Democrats do win the House or the House and Senate. [9:42] It's going to get harder for the White House, and it's going to get harder for the press secretary. [9:46] Well, I agree with that. [9:48] Moderate voters, independent voters don't like chaos. [9:51] This is why I think we're seeing it. [9:52] Why do you think it's going to get harder for the press secretary? [9:54] Because, I mean, if Democrats win, the oversight environment, the investigatory environment, that particular job, and whoever is sitting at the top of the Republican heap in the House Oversight Committee, those two people you're going to see on your TV every day, they're going to be sort of the public de facto defense lawyers for Trump.