The latest news this morning came from the press secretary. Okay, the original one that you played earlier, Noel, her announcing Kimberly Guilfoyle. I want to play that now because this is the first thing that she announced as press secretary. Here it is.
First of all, on Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Daily Mail has been reporting on her since last year. The president said yesterday to reporters that he is considering firing her. Do you know a timeline for that? And also potentially who could be on the short list to replace her if he does.
We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team and we wish her well.
That is the shadiest corporate communications.
If you know someone who is head of communications or who works at communications at a company, that is the thing. We wish them the best and we thank them for their contributions. And that is what they're saying to Kimberly. Not even saying, 'Hey, look, it was tough to, you know, we loved working with her and this was a tough decision for us or whatever.' Look, and I've been a party to that. I know how that is. But Kimberly Guilfoyle, here's the thing. Kimberly Guilfoyle was, you know, accused of this thing, asking someone, 'All right, fine.' That she was doing that behind the scenes. Was she abusing her job or her position as ambassador? That's a whole other story. But I don't understand why they are not, why they are focusing on Kimberly Guilfoyle. And I do believe that it is a distraction. They are using this Kimberly Guilfoyle thing as a distraction for people to stop focusing on the grift that's happening with the Trump family, the grift that's happening with Donald Trump, the grift and the malfeasance that is reportedly happening with Ken Paxton in Texas.
I think they're focusing on her because it is a good distraction and you don't have to talk about that before the midterm elections. They don't need, pardon me for hitting the mic, I keep hitting it. They don't need Kimberly Guilfoyle anymore. They can find a replacement for her, but they do need Ken Paxton. They do need Texas. So whatever they can do to keep the media off of that, that's what they will do. And so this new... Okay, so this is a former Trump press aide is saying, 'I don't know why they put her out there on day two with so little preparation. I think she's going to be a train wreck.'
Don, we have a much extended clip of how disastrous she was during the press briefing. Do you want to listen to it?
Yes, I was getting to that. Thank you very much, Noel. So we're going to get to that. So anyway, getting behind the podium is tough, but she got off to the wrong foot. She needs to get much better fast, otherwise she'll break Scaramucci's record. That's what the White House official is saying about Katie Zachariah or Katie Zakaria, because I think it's spelled the same or very similarly. But this is her behind the podium. Noel is the senior producer of this program, as what Noel was saying. Here it is. Roll it, Noel.
Good morning. I am so honored to work for President Trump and the American people as the new White House press secretary. I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time. I'm looking forward to working with each of you as well, especially as we are in the middle of the midterm blitz with energy and excitement never seen before in the history of midterms thanks to President Trump. Attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hard-working Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump and Republicans. It's not hard to see why. We had a historic one-day war and now we have a booming economy and a great relationship with Venezuela. To officially be part of this incredible journey together. And with that, I will take your questions here in our new media.
I want to ask you a policy question. Has the US stopped sharing intel with Ukraine?
I'll have to get back to you on that.
I have two questions for you if you can. First of all, on Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Daily Mail has been reporting on her since last year. The president said yesterday to reporters that he is considering firing her. Do you know a timeline for that? And also potentially who could be on the short list to replace her if he does.
We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team and we wish her well.
Okay. The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable. So my president, excuse me, my husband, that's a good one. My husband is out here. Bless him. It's a lot. And we will be moving out here. And my work, though my work will be demanding, they will always be a priority. And President Trump is the most family-friendly president we've ever had. He has hired more women with families. And the fact that he knew I had four kids and he knew that this job would be demanding and still placed his trust in me shows that I know I'm capable of being able to step up to that. So thank you for that question. In fact, I am going to end it because President Trump is heading out to Marine One for our historic trip to Alaska and we can ask him all of the questions out there. So thank you so much.
Ah, wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Huh.
I am texting with someone, a source who is giving me information right now as we speak, saying that she was basically a train wreck and they don't understand why they put her out there. I wonder how long she's going to be out there if you saw that. I mean, what did you guys think of that performance right there? What did you think of that performance? Because I don't really know what to say as my source is texting me now. I don't really know what to say about it except for what is being reported and that is that they're saying, someone said, 'We thought we'd miss Sean Spicer.' We just keep going down. That it is that bad.
Well, it's purely a political speech. She's the official White House press secretary. She's not there to talk about campaign rallies and not to talk about the campaign and to talk about her favorite issue. That's what Sean Maloney, who is a former representative, said. There's an important difference, which is this is from John Avlon, my former colleague at CNN, said there's a difference in what she's going to have to answer, presumably tough questions on the fly, and she is reading her remarks right now quite extensively and they're all sick of, you know, kind of just, you know, propaganda and fluffing.
Uh, yeah. Yeah. Let's see. I'm going to see if I can get John Avlon to pop on to talk about this and my source as well. Besides John Avlon, let's see. This is a quote from the White House official just now following Katie Zachariah's or Zakaria's first press briefing. Getting behind the podium is tough, but she got off on the wrong foot. She needs to get much better, faster, otherwise she'll break Scaramucci's record. I did not expect her to be that bad. I really didn't. Hello, John Avlon, my former colleague.
What were you? The editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, the chief political... for many years. How you doing, my man?
I'm doing okay. So, look, you're an expert on these things. What did you think of Katie Zachariah's performance this morning?
John Avlon, can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you now. You got me?
Yeah. What did you think of her performance this morning?
This ain't going to end well. It was a pretty face-planting debut. I was doing Stephanie Ruhle's show over at MSNBC live with Basil Smikle and Micheline Patrick Maloney, and I was struck by two things. One, in 16 minutes she took around a minute of real questions, and the most important of them about whether the US is still sharing intelligence with Ukraine. She didn't have an answer. She didn't know. So, you know, she's breaking the Hatch Act right out of the gate. She's doing the propagandistic stuff we all expect, which is not the job of the press secretary. We had a little bit of news with Kim Guilfoyle, but she's doing everything off notes and she may look the part to Donald Trump, but she's got to be able to have the content to speak off the cuff, which is something that Karoline Leavitt could do. And she has not shown in that first debut with three questions from Breitbart, Fox News, and Daily Mail. She couldn't seem to do that. So this is going to be a rocky road. Putting aside the whole freedom of the press and telling the truth thing.
