Katie Zacharia ousted, capping off a week of remarkable upheaval inside Trumpworld
The end was nigh after [Katie Zacharia] appeared on Fox News on Thursday night to be interviewed by the president’s friend Sean Hannity, who asked her a few tough questions and treated her with rare skepticism.
The reception she got on Friday morning on “Fox and Friends” wasn’t exactly friendly, either.
“Do you wish you would have disclosed to the president about the bar and not passing the bar?” one of the hosts, Lawrence Jones, asked her.
“Well, Lawrence,” Ms. Zacharia responded, “those questions weren’t asked.”
The firing of the administration’s top spokeswoman capped off a week of remarkable upheaval inside Trumpworld.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ambassador to Greece, was fired on television on Tuesday (during Ms. Zacharia’s only briefing). The president spent time in the Oval Office this week trying to get to the bottom of a vicious fight between two of his loyalists, Richard Grenell and Alina Mildon.
Paolo Zampolli, a longtime Trump confidant who claimed to have introduced the president to his wife, was pushed out at the State Department after one of his internecine feuds spilled into the press. And the daughter of Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and others in her circle, came under scrutiny for their moneymaking overseas. [Continue reading…]
Katie Wiles, the daughter of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, was pictured at a shooting range where she was holding a rifle while standing alongside Željko Budimir, the interior minister of Republika Srpska, CBS News confirmed on Thursday.
Republika Srpska is a Serb-majority, self-governing region in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The administration has maintained close political ties with Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Katie Wiles visited the area in mid-August on business for her political lobbying firm Continental Strategy, the company confirmed to CBS News. The photo has surfaced amid scrutiny of ties between figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit and the Bosnian Serb region, which is led by pro-Russia politician Milorad Dodik.
“Katie Wiles visited the country in mid-August for two days with a U.S.-based company who was invited to do a feasibility study in the region,” the Continental Strategy spokesperson told CBS News. “Wiles provides strategic communications support to this U.S. company and has done so for over two years. Wiles has not spoken with any United States government official regarding Srpska.”
The development—less than three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections with control of the House and Senate at stake—comes as Trump is reportedly considering replacing Susie Wiles as chief of staff, although he has denied it. [Continue reading…]