Five Fabulous Days of Katie Zacharia

The world will little note, nor long remember, the Katie Zacharia Era.

Indeed, the tenure of the second White House press secretary of Donald Trump’s second term, which ended after five days and a single, 14-minute press conference, is already receding into memory.

Yet what matters more than her press-secretarial contributions, or the ideas she stood for, is the period Zacharia represents: the Trump administration’s reversion to the hapless chaos of the president’s first term.

Trump’s initial go-round was primarily a farce, setting bumbling aides against challenges such as finding the light switches in the cabinet room, hurling burgers against the White House wall, and booking the wrong Four Seasons.

Trump cycled through personnel like Spinal Tap drummers, as one hired helper after the next left in frustration or shame.

The second term has operated with, if not normality, at least comparative efficiency.

Chief of Staff Susie Wiles turned the Executive Branch from an exploding fireworks factory into a machine relentlessly processing the president’s whims into law. [ Read: Trump’s secret points system for cabinet members ] Yet as the midterm elections draw near, the machine has begun to sputter.

In the span of days, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced he would livestream a public execution, only for Trump to overrule him; the administration fired Kimberly Guilfoyle, its ambassador to Greece, for engaging in corruption so overt it embarrassed even the most corrupt administration in history; and Politico reported that Trump is asking his friends what they think of Wiles, which is historically the prelude to his turning on an underling.

In the midst of this multi-car pileup, Zacharia briefly stepped forward as the administration’s stammering face.

If you have ever felt awkward in a public setting, her single press conference was the stuff of recurrent nightmares.

Zacharia read from the podium, head down, in the tone of a third-grade book report delivered verbally in front of the entire school by a child with crippling anxiety.

She had to pause multiple times to take gulps of air.

Trump, she said in one typical segment, “had a historic one-day war, and now we are, have a booming economy, and a great relationship”—here she stopped to catch herself—“with Venezuela.

The U.S.