Former White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia appeared on Piers Morgan’s show in an episode published Wednesday to talk about her work with President Donald Trump — but the interview quickly grew tense.
From the start, Morgan pressed Zacharia on how she felt being amid a firestorm that ended up with her being booted from the job after only five days.
Zacharia’s first and only White House press briefing was widely criticized, and scrutiny was building on her characterizations of her legal credentials. Eventually, Trump told reporters he urged her to “reconsider” her position.
The onetime White House flack staunchly resisted spilling details of those pivot days, however.
At one point in the interview, Morgan inquired about her response to Trump telling reporters he asked Zacharia about the job, “Is this really for you?”
Zacharia refused to answer.
“Piers, I will keep private conversations between myself and the president confidential,” she said.
Morgan attempted to press on as the pair spoke over each other, with the TV host noting Trump essentially told the whole world what he said to her.
“I will keep fighting for him every single day. No matter how hard the media wants to spin, no matter how hard anchors, pundits, reporters, journals want to spin what he is doing and focus it on me,” she answered.
“I will continue fighting for him. I am ruthlessly loyal.”
Then, Morgan appeared to lose patience with her polished responses.
“Come on, let’s cut the cr-p here and have a serious genuine conversation. You sound like a robot. Has Donald Trump got some program plugged into you to make you come out with all this stuff?” he said.
Morgan then noted that for all the talk about loyalty, she was fired after five days.
Zacharia took offense at the “robot” characterization.
“You can couch it however you want, Piers, but I take issue with how you’re couching it,” she said. “I will not continue relitigating it.”
The ex-press secretary tried to redirect the focus on praising Trump, claiming this interview should not be about her but about the president.
“To sit here and feel sorry for myself, Piers, about how the media has treated me or what the media has said about me does not take into account what they have ruthlessly done to President Trump. It is not about me,” Zacharia said.
Morgan responds by noting that the whole point of the interview was to talk about her and her time under Trump.
“If you’ve changed your mind, that’s fine, but that was the whole point of doing the interview,” Morgan said in resignation.
