New text messages reviewed by Breitbart News have blown a hole in Politico's narrative that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles "set up" and orchestrated Katie Zacharia's Thursday interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity — the appearance immediately preceding her exit as White House press secretary after just five days on the job.
According to the messages, it was Zacharia herself who actively sought media interviews, including the Hannity booking. A White House official told Breitbart that Politico had the text messages in hand before publishing its story, titled "Susie Wiles helped set up Fox interview ahead of press secretary's exit," yet made no mention of them."
The texts tell a different story. One exchange from Tuesday afternoon, hours after Zacharia's first press briefing, shows a Fox News producer writing that Zacharia had offered to do an interview on Hannity that night. "Katie said she can join us from the rally tonight," the producer wrote. An official responded that the timing likely wouldn't work, noting President Trump would be speaking in Alaska during Hannity's 9 p.m. Eastern hour. The interview ultimately didn't materialize that evening — but the initiative, according to the messages, came from Zacharia.
"Sensationalism has replaced substance, personal attacks have replaced reporting, and journalistic integrity is nonexistent," the White House official told Breitbart. "Politico is sacrificing its credibility for cheap clicks and it's shameful."
The New York Post likewise reported that text messages it obtained show Zacharia pushed to book the Fox News interviews that preceded her exit — cutting against Politico's account of a Wiles-orchestrated hit. The Post also noted that Wiles had not favored Zacharia for the press secretary role in the first place, a detail Politico used to build its theory.
Zacharia confirmed her departure in a post on X just after 9 p.m. ET Friday, alongside a photo of herself and the president in the Oval Office. "President Trump is a kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic, and hardworking man," she wrote. "I wish more Americans appreciated him. No one will ever make America great the way he has and continues to. It was an honor to work for him."
He added that he wanted her to have a good life and that she was "being brutalized by the media."
In her Hannity interview, Zacharia laid out a compressed timeline: she received the offer by phone the previous Wednesday, flew to Washington for a Friday meeting, returned home to California on Saturday, came back Sunday, and started Monday — the Columbus Day federal holiday — receiving briefing materials only the morning of her Tuesday briefing, which ran 14 minutes and included three questions. Hannity pressed her on whether staff should have prepared her better, and asked whether she had failed the bar exam. She confirmed she had, and said she did not retake it.
Politico followed its first piece with a second, claiming the original caused a "freakout" in the West Wing after Executive and Special Assistant to the President Natalie Harp printed it to show Trump. Neither piece mentioned the text messages indicating Zacharia initiated the booking.
The episode has also fueled speculation about Wiles' standing. Author Michael Wolff claimed Friday that Wiles could be next out, despite Trump insisting there is "zero chance" he is considering booting his chief of staff. The White House has denied reports that Trump is phoning allies to solicit opinions on Wiles.
Our Take
This is what the legacy media does when a narrative is too useful to check. Politico had the receipts — text messages sitting in its possession showing Zacharia pitched the Hannity interview herself — and published a story built on anonymous sources claiming the exact opposite. That isn't reporting. That's a hit piece with a byline.
Ask yourself why. A five-day press secretary tenure is a juicy story on its own. But a five-day tenure engineered by a scheming chief of staff? That's a palace-intrigue epic, and it feeds the ongoing attempt to portray the Trump White House as chaos incarnate. The anonymous "sources" got their ink, the "freakout" follow-up got its clicks, and the actual documents were buried.
Patriots should note the pattern: when the corporate press can't find a scandal, they manufacture one from anonymous quotes and then spike the evidence that contradicts it. The only reason we know about these texts is that Breitbart and the New York Post did the work Politico wouldn't. Remember that the next time Politico tells you what's happening inside the West Wing.
Katie Zacharia's tenure was short and rocky — she said so herself. But being bad at a press briefing and being set up by your own boss are two very different accusations, and the paper that made the second one is now sitting on proof it isn't true. Will anyone at Politico explain why the texts didn't make the story? Or is accountability a one-way street?
