The White House is at a major crossroads this afternoon as Trump 2 looks a lot like Trump 1. A White House marred with chaos, quick turnarounds, and firings just days after they were hired. Katie Zachariah, the White House press secretary, being the latest. It also comes as we learn today that Elon Musk actually approached Donald Trump with the idea of disrupting Star Shield, the military version of Starlink that eventually led to the deaths of Ukrainian civilians. I remember I was attacked over the past 48 hours for suggesting that Musk and Trump could face war crimes tribunals or charges or allegations over the fact that they helped aid and abet Russian strikes. And well, now everything I have said has turned out to be true. A difficult day at the White House right now as Trump's brand new press secretary is already gone. Lasting just 5 days, the shortest tenure in modern history. As Trump liked to say behind the scenes, she was not ready for prime time. And the bombshell report that confirms Elon Musk was the one who pitched slowing down Ukraine Starlink despite publicly blaming Trump for it. It's been a long week. It's been a long week. But yes, please consider supporting my work. Subscribe today. Like, comment, share. We're just getting started and we have some fun interviews with you today for you today both from the White House and with potentially a future senator from Maine. Starting on Katie Zachariah. She was forced out of the White House today. She was fired. She started on Monday. She hadn't even moved to Washington DC yet. Trump of course is trying to spin it. He told reporters that he encouraged her to reconsider it. But as Caitlyn Collins put it, here's the truth. Trump was embarrassed by the coverage of her first briefing when he asked other aides about her. Nobody was willing to defend her. Collins reports that the main reason Trump rushed to pick her in the first place was that he wanted more people defending him on TV. Then she went on Sean Hannity's show last night, didn't defend him well enough, and Trump knew that she had to go. Think about that. The job of the White House press secretary isn't to inform the American people. It's to defend Trump on cable news. That's this White House. And it was a disastrous week. Her first and only briefing lasted only 14 minutes. Trump was allegedly blindsided over the fact that she had not passed the bar exam. How'd she get the job? Well, according to Axios, Trump actually wanted Maria Bartiromo and Scott Jennings was even in the mix, too. In the end, Trump offered Zachariah the job on the spot after one meeting with a big push from none other than Natalie Harp. This week was supposed to be a big week of messaging before the midterms. Instead, in just a few days, Kimberly Guilfoyle was fired as ambassador to Greece. Paulo Zangari pushed out at the State Department. Susie Wiles's daughter came under scrutiny for her work overseas. And now the press secretary is gone. I spoke with Luke Russert, who was at the White House today about how the White House is responding to all of this. Take a listen. Luke Russert right now is with us. He's at the White House. Luke, I got to jump right in after the news of the Katie Zachariah firing. What's the mood like right now at the White House among press officials?
Yeah, I'll say there's not a lot of surprise I think here at the White House about the fact that Miss Zachariah is not going to continue on in the role of White House press secretary. Her first briefing was pretty much a disaster from start to finish. The fact that it only lasted about 15 minutes, that she took questions from three reporters at outlets that are widely considered to be friendly to the administration was not a strong start for her in a room that requires you to build trust and a rapport with the reporters there. There was a lot of frustration about the fact that she even held a briefing at all and then didn't call on the vast majority of reporters in the room. But I think the real point where things started to turn was when she agreed to do these interviews with again more friendly outlets, commentators like Sean Hannity, the folks on the curvy couch of Fox and Friends, even Jack Posobiec of Pizzagate fame, and was still getting pressed by these folks about the claims that she had made about her background, about being an attorney, about the fact that frankly she didn't seem capable, not just of being an attorney, a lawyer, as she claimed to be, but of doing the job that she had been picked to do as press secretary.
You mentioned on Twitter moments ago that there was a suggestion that she wasn't ready for prime time. Now, if there's anything we know about this president is that he wants someone on television who is ready for prime time. What do you mean by that?
Well, that was the understanding that I think we got when the president kind of suddenly announced this decision to hire Katie Zachariah as the press secretary based on reporting doing that over the head of his White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The president has been frustrated in recent days about their lack of consistent messaging. In fact, in recent weeks since the departure of Karoline Leavitt, he has not found someone that's been a strong surrogate for him out on the airwaves. He saw Katie Zachariah on cable news doing these hits. But I think there is a big difference and I've often compared it to stage fright to those experiences that I had in middle and high school theater camp where people would get up on stage and see real human beings looking back at them. And it's a nerve-wracking experience. I understand that and certainly empathize with it. But that's the job in so many ways to be able to interface with folks not just here in the briefing room but also in those kind of off-the-record, on-background conversations that Katie Zachariah has not been having because she's not been working with the president on his team.
Well, I found that interesting because if you look on the official White House press secretary Twitter, it was never changed to Katie Zachariah like it was for Karoline Leavitt there. It never really seemed as though she was actually in the role outside of the one press briefing. Was she communicating with you guys off behind the scenes? Were there conversations happening at all?
So, from my understanding, there were some conversations happening with reporters from other outlets, including outlets that the president has not been particularly fond of as of late. I'm thinking of Politico, I believe, as an example, where she was interacting with at least some of the reporters here on the White House campus. For my part, the only experience I got to see her in person was for that very brief 15-minute briefing that she held here over the last couple of days. I would have loved the opportunity to chat with her and get to know her a little bit better. But even when she did an appearance on Fox and Friends this morning, she did it over on what we call Pebble Beach here. So, she was kind of walking past reporters, walking past the reporter workspace. And sometimes we get officials to stop and answer our questions. I had that experience with the border czar Tom Homan a couple weeks back where the official stopped and answered questions. Katie Zachariah this morning did not stop and answer questions from reporters and I think that was yet another indication if you're trying to save your job, you think you'd be more willing to take on questions. But it seemed like it was a foregone conclusion, especially after that Fox and Friends interview this morning, this job was lost.
Is there any word right now based on what you and your colleagues are discussing of who could possibly replace Katie Zachariah?
So, based on the conversation that the president had with Peter Doocy of Fox News, he says that he's not in a rush. He doesn't have a short list, but there are a lot of people calling him in his words because the person who takes this job becomes a star. Obviously, that wasn't the case exactly with Katie Zachariah. Her star has fallen pretty considerably since she decided to take that job. But the point is taken. I think there were a lot of folks on Twitter. I saw Meghan McCain among others in the conservative sphere pushing for Scott Jennings once again. Obviously a pretty familiar name to folks who watch CNN. He has been the kind of pro-Trump commentator throughout this entire second term as someone who could potentially be the next press secretary. Obviously a different choice than the women that the president has been picking ever since Sean Spicer left the role several years ago. So Scott Jennings has been someone that has been floated, someone that has been rumored to be favored by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. But for the time being, the president has said that he's not looking for someone new. And with 18 days to go until the midterm elections, it's hard to see him trying to make that a priority right now as opposed to his continued travel on the campaign trail.
Do we know if Katie is going to stay in any official role at the White House? I saw there was some reporting that she's supposed to have dinner tonight with Vice President Vance and his family. Is that still happening? Do we know anything about that?
Yeah, that's right. She is scheduled to have dinner. Actually, her and her family are scheduled to have dinner at the Naval Observatory with Vice President Vance and the second lady Usha Vance. So, we'll see if a job comes out of that for her, either with the vice president in his office or elsewhere in the administration. We've seen this tactic used before where an administration official who is not working and getting along well with others here at the White House is reassigned to a different post. I'm thinking of former national security adviser Mike Waltz who was moved to be ambassador at the UN after some butting heads here at the White House. I'm also thinking of Kristi Noem who was kind of pretty infamously moved out of the Department of Homeland Security into this special envoy position that apparently has just wrapped for the Shield of the Americas. So that is certainly a tactic that has been tried in this administration. Different from the first term where the president would hire and fire people kind of at will and then they'd go out and speak badly about him in the aftermath. Unclear if that's going to be the case in this term or whether she'll kind of bounce back in a different role either in the administration or on the outside.
Luke, thanks so much for the time. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Aaron. Really appreciate it.
Now, that conversation with Luke is important because it sets the stage for what happens next. This story is important to me personally because my family is in Ukraine. The Telegraph is reporting exclusively this afternoon that Elon Musk was the one who came to the White House and pitched Donald Trump on slowing down Starlink for the Ukrainians. Four sources told the paper that Musk pitched putting speed limits on the system. One source said Trump agreed, which cleared the way for the Pentagon to slow down Star Shield. Here's why that matters. Earlier this week, Musk publicly said that any limits on speed or usage were decided by the United States military and ultimately Trump. In other words, he blamed Trump. But one senior source told the Telegraph, quote, he tweeted out that he was innocent and that it was the US administration that did it. The reality is they were both in on it. The damage was real. The speed cap held Ukrainian drones to about 100 miles per hour, roughly half the speed of Russia's jet-powered drones and missiles, made them almost impossible to intercept. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians went without power. Because of it, many civilians were killed. Because of Donald Trump and Elon Musk actively aiding and abetting the strikes by Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. This afternoon, I also had the opportunity to speak with Troy Jackson, who's running to be the next senator from Maine. It's an important conversation. Make sure to subscribe, support this work, my conversation with Troy. Excited today to be joined again by Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine. Troy, we got less than three weeks to go, about two and a half weeks to go. How is the campaign? How are you feeling right now?
