{"text":[[{"start":5.5,"text":"It was a pretty excruciating 14 minutes or so. Katie Zacharia, the latest platinum-blonde superfan to find herself in the upper echelons of President Donald Trump’s entourage, took to the White House briefing room on Tuesday to deliver a statement so stilted and oddly stressed that it sounded like her first encounter with punctuation. She then bravely attempted to talk all on her own, taking questions from three outlets from across the political spectrum, Breitbart, Fox News and, er, the Daily Mail, before abruptly ending the press conference. "}],[{"start":40.1,"text":"“What I hope to do in this position is to . . . only build on, only amplify and only multiply, to the extent possible, all of the wins he’s making for Americans,” Trump’s new press secretary only explained to the packed room, before taking a question on how she was planning to balance her family life with her professional one. “So my president — or excuse me, my husband, that’s a good one! My husband is out here for the week.”"}],[{"start":66.9,"text":"He only needed book a five-day visit, it turned out. By Friday, after Trump told her that he would “reconsider” her position if he were her, Zacharia was out, making her the shortest-serving White House press secretary in history. "}],[{"start":81.4,"text":"It had actually somehow managed to get worse for Zacharia after the press conference. This accomplished “attorney” that Trump had boasted about on Truth Social turned out . . . not to be one. She had never passed the bar exam. Even an appearance on Fox News with long-term Trump ally Sean Hannity, who had initially defended her and complained about how unfair the press was being, couldn’t save her. “I would love to build a relationship with all of those members of the press corps so there is a substative [sic] component to us having an interv — ability to interact,” she told Hannity, as if some pilot version of ChatGPT-1 was in her ear. "}],[{"start":121,"text":"The mere fact that Zacharia had found herself in a job she was clearly not up to shows the extent to which the president and his administration have lost their grip. But maybe she should be thanked for using her brief tenure to present the truest picture of the Trump administration yet: a total car crash. After all, it’s not as if her five-day long fail represents the only embarrassment for the White House right now. She actually managed to break news on another one during her brief briefing: Kimberly Guilfoyle, jilted ex-fiancée of Donald Trump Jr and ex-wife of California governor Gavin Newsom, had been asked to resign from her position as ambassador to Greece following the embarrassing revelation that she had begged a Trump donor to pay off a personal $100,000 Amex bill. "}],[{"start":169.75,"text":"And Guilfoyle is not the only one begging: Trump followed up on his dubious promise to give every American $5,000 if they do the unimaginable and return Republicans to power in Congress, posting a 34-second video of himself making the same pledge on Monday. And then there was the U-turn on perhaps the unholiest debacle of them all: the plan by the devout “secretary of war” himself Pete Hegseth to livestream an execution, which Trump had initially said he “absolutely” supported but then decided against after a widespread backlash. "}],[{"start":203.75,"text":"It is all feeling distinctly dysfunctional. Haters will say ’twas ever thus. But at the start of Trump’s second term, the administration had an element of slickness that lent proceedings at least a veneer of competence. Trump seemed to hit the ground running, signing 32 executive orders in his first four days. Karoline Leavitt, Zacharia’s predecessor, was genuinely impressive in delivering the president’s message. Chief of staff Susie Wiles seemed to be bringing order to the West Wing (rumours are now swirling that the president is considering firing Wiles, which is unlikely to alleviate the chaos). Hell, some even believed Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” would deliver what it said on the tin. (That’s a good one!)"}],[{"start":247.35,"text":"Since those optimistic early days, Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted to record lows. With congressional and gubernatorial elections looming, some of Trump’s firmest allies — people like Byron Donalds, frontrunner for Florida governor — are distancing themselves from the president in order to give themselves a chance of winning. "}],[{"start":266.3,"text":"The desperate state in which the administration finds itself was encapsulated quite perfectly by the White House’s X account on Tuesday. “Trust the process,” read the post, with a black-and-white image of Trump and the words: “Bottom line, it’s gonna all work out. You know why? It always does.” "}],[{"start":283.90000000000003,"text":"Oh, snap. The words “scraping”, “bottom” and “barrel” come to mind. It’s a shame Zacharia is no longer around to try to put them into a sentence for us. "}],[{"start":300.05,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792304856_1501.mp3"}