President Donald Trump used part of his Florida rally Friday to talk about his short-lived press secretary, Katie Zacharia. He said the “perfect, beautiful woman” “freaked out” when the White House press corps started shouting at her during her first briefing.
The remarks came during a riff on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., when Trump turned to complain about the “fake news” reporters who had gathered near the White House helipad earlier in the day.
“I told the story today to the fake news, when I walked out on that beautiful helipad, you know, we have the fake news, hundreds, hundreds, I have never seen so many,” Trump told the crowd in Fort Myers.
“They’re getting worse. That means you’re doing better, when those groups get bigger and bigger. More and more fakers,” he said, gesturing to the press section at the back of the rally. He estimated that only “six, seven percent are really fine journalists.”
“But they were screaming. They wanted to know so many different things. What about this, what about that?” Trump said.
He then brought up Zacharia, who lasted just five days in the job.
“No wonder that poor young woman, she was a perfect, beautiful woman when she walked into that press room and they started screaming at her, she freaked out,” Trump said.
The president described advising her to consider other work. “And I said, ‘You know what? There are nicer ways for you to make a living. You want to deal with these maniacs, you can deal if you want, but there are easier ways for you to live.’”
Trump then went back to his attack on Omar, whom he has accused of using a fake name. “But because Ilhan used a fake name to be sworn in, I assume she must immediately resign from Congress,” he said.
The Fort Myers crowd cheered and broke into chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Trump was in Fort Myers on Friday to campaign for Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for Florida governor, and Sen. Ashley Moody, who is seeking to keep her seat. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis greeted the president when he arrived in the state Friday afternoon.
Zacharia’s brief tenure was one of the shortest for a White House press secretary, and her abrupt exit drew wide media attention. Trump’s comments Friday were his clearest public account yet of why she left.
The president has long feuded with the White House press corps. In his telling, the job was less about the press secretary herself and more about what he sees as a hostile and unruly media. That is a theme he returns to often on the campaign trail, and one that reliably energizes his supporters.
On Friday, his description of Zacharia was warm, while his description of the reporters was anything but.
[READ MORE: Trump Calls on Ilhan Omar to Resign, Claims She Used “Fake Name” to Get Elected]
