Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is coming out swinging for Abdul El-Sayed ... calling claims linking the Michigan senatorial candidate to the Muslim Brotherhood flat-out racist.
Charlie got AOC on Friday at a Culver's in Michigan, where she's been campaigning for El-Sayed ... and he asked whether the Muslim Brotherhood controversy was rooted in reality or racism.
AOC didn't mince words ... saying the allegations fall "into racist very clearly" and blasting critics for dragging El-Sayed's painful family history into politics.
Katie Zacharia's White House career is apparently over before it even got started ... with President Trump's newest press secretary reportedly getting the boot after a week on the job.
According to The New York Times, Zacharia has been fired after 5 days on the job ... making her stint even shorter than Anthony Scaramucci's infamous 11-day run as White House communications director in 2017 ... even the Mooch lasted longer.
The reported firing comes just minutes after Trump suggested Zacharia might be better off without the job ... telling reporters she'd been treated "very, very badly" by the media and didn't need the headache.
Anthony Scaramucci will no longer be known as the shortest-lived White House Press Secretary ... that distinction now belongs to Katie Zacharia ... and the Mooch ain't mad.
Anthony couldn't resist chiming in Friday after Katie's blink-and-you-missed-it stint as President Trump's mouthpiece came to an end after just 5 days ... a firing that everyone saw coming.
Joe Scarborough started it all by joking, "Mooch, we hardly knew ye" ... a reference to Scaramucci's 11-day run as White House press secretary during Trump's first term.
Scaramucci fired back with a classic response ... "Records are made to be broken. But I take no pleasure in other people's pain."
10:35 AM PT -- A senior White House official tells Fox News that Katie is "transitioning out" of the role.
President Trump is telling Katie Zacharia she doesn't need the headache of being White House press secretary ... and he's letting her decide whether to stick around.
Trump says his newest spokesperson has been treated "very, very badly" by the media ... revealing he personally told her she doesn't have to put up with the abuse.
Katie Zacharia says she doesn't know when the next White House press briefing will be ... but she hopes she can inspire more confidence in those around her before it goes down.
The new White House Press Secretary appeared on "Fox & Friends" Friday morning to discuss her first week ... which many feel went about as bad as it could go.
Katie was asked when she'll next address the media ... and she said she doesn't know -- but she promised to work closely with President Donald Trump and the White House communications team to figure it out.
Up is down, and down is up ... and the White House Press Secretary is refusing to take questions from the media.
Katie Zachariais under fire for claiming she was a "lawyer" when she never passed the bar exam ... but when the White House press corps dared to ask her about it Friday, she stunningly shut them all down.
Ya gotta see the video ... President Trump's new White House Press Secretary walks up to a throng of reporters on the North Lawn, and the first words out of her mouth are, "I'm not taking any questions."
Fox News contributor Kennedy is dishing on her experiences with Kimberly Guilfoyle while the two worked together at the network, painting Guilfoyle as a status-hungry social climber with a spicy sexual appetite.
In fact, Kennedy wrote a column for the Daily Mail on Thursday, pointing out one incident in particular that showed just how spicy Guilfoyle could get.
Kennedy wrote that she was invited to Guilfoyle's home one night and, when she got there, Guilfoyle opened the door wearing a "black, push-up corset and thigh-high stockings, and purred: 'You like what you see?'"
Sean Hannity grilled Katie Zacharia over her bar exam controversy on his show Thursday night ... and the experience didn't go so well for the newly minted White House press secretary.
The longtime Fox News host interviewed Zacharia on "Hannity" about her first week as President Trump's press secretary and, at one point, Hannity brought up that Zacharia called it a "conspiracy theory as it relates to the issue of being a lawyer."
Zacharia flashed an uncomfortable smile as Hannity pointed out that she attended Pepperdine University and failed her first attempt at passing the bar exam to become an attorney.
Mike Rogers -- a former congressman who is running for Senate -- says he trusts that feds had enough evidence to raid Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's residence ... and he rejects the notion President Donald Trump is trying to persecute political enemies.
Charlie and Jacob -- our TMZDC crew -- caught up with Rogers Thursday in Michigan, and given Mike's experience as a former FBI agent, they asked him about the raid conducted at Rep. Omar's home this week.
Mike told us he's confident the FBI must've had good reason to bust down Ilhan's door. A little housekeeping on that remark -- it appears the FBI didn't conduct the raid, and it was instead done by Homeland Security Investigations ... but, it's still the feds.
Katie Zachariasays her mind was elsewhere when she took the bar exam in California ... and she failed because she was too distracted by planning her wedding.
Kate Zacharia tells Jack Posobiec that she was distracted when she took the bar exam because she had just gotten engaged, but it didn't matter anyway because passing it was "inconsequential" since she "knew I wouldn’t need the bar in China."
When asked why she never took the bar again, she says it was because she started having kids, and it was "okay and acceptable" to label herself a "lawyer" for the work she was doing.
@justinbaragona
The new White House Press Secretary admitted Thursday that she never passed the bar despite presenting herself as a "lawyer" ... and she went with the wedding-planning excuse in an interview with Jack Posobiec on "Real America's Voice."
Katie says she failed the bar in 2011 after graduating from Pepperdine University's law school ... claiming she was not only distracted by planning her wedding to Tyler Zacharia, but also by her plans to move to China to be with Tyler.
Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed hung out with the TMZ DC crew ... even sharing a Gatorade, though the trio made sure to waterfall it.
Check out the new YouTube collab between TMZ and the New York Post, "The Low Down," where we bring you stories that are gripping, outrageous, and sometimes scandalous.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating who supplied the ketamine used during the alleged Cornell gang rape.
Abdul El-Sayed took a break from pitching voters on equality and human rights ... and got to work pitching TMZ DC on Gatorade Zero.
Jacoband Charliehave boots on the ground in Michigan, and they caught up with the Michigan senatorial candidate at a Detroit gas station as he stopped to refuel. El-Sayed beelined straight for the fridge, where he showed us what's powering his campaign.
El-Sayed pulled out an ice-cold bottle of Gatorade Zero, then stumped for the drink ... schooling our guys on electrolytes and hydration ... and explaining why Glacier Cherry is his flavor of choice.
White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia may not have passed the bar ... but she did work for a multilevel marketing company.
According to WIRED, Zacharia worked as an affiliate of the fitness company Beachbody, and she told the outlet the company ran a multilevel marketing structure that she says was "sort of a pyramid scheme."
The outlet used a database of leaked online material from District 4 Labs, which included Zacharia's since-deleted LinkedIn profile that displayed Beachbody email addresses as her points of contact.
Trump supporter Eric Deters is suing Kimberly Guilfoyle ... and he says things that might come out in the legal process could seriously damage the president's administration.
The former Kentucky congressional candidate released a video Thursday ... in which he said he filed a defamation suit against the former U.S. Ambassador to Greece.
Deters claims he's got a recording of a phone call he plans to play for the world on Friday ... which he says may topple this administration and sink JD Vance and Marco Rubio's chances of winning the 2028 presidential election.
Abdul El-Sayed says Donald Trump doesn't realize it, but he's actually praising the Michigan senatorial candidate by mocking his name, but the first order of business Tuesday night was chowin' down on some Red Hot Cheese Flavored popcorn!!!
Our TMZ DC guys, Jacob and Charlie, are now in Michigan and caught up with El-Sayed at a Detroit gas station. El-Sayed cracked open a bag of the Red Hots, which Jacob clearly couldn't handle, so the 3 then shared a bottle of Gatorade to bring down the heat.
Then they got serious. Jacob mentioned he spoke to a guy in Kalamazoo who felt if El-Sayed got elected, he wouldn't be as progressive as he sounds now because of his religion. El-Sayed explains why he's progressive BECAUSE of his religion.
11:30 AM PT -- Chief White House Spokesperson Katie Zachariatells TMZ ... “I practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials.”
A White House officialalso says ... Katie has her JD from Pepperdine. Katie moved to China with her husband after graduating because of his job at an American private equity firm while she worked on international transaction law.
Katie Zacharia -- the new White House Press Secretary -- never passed the bar exam ... even though President Donald Trump insists she's a lawyer.
The Wall Street Journal published an article Thursday that cites an anonymous source with direct knowledge of the matter who claims Katie took the bar exam shortly after graduating from Pepperdine University's Caruso School of Law and didn't pass.
Katie then went to China with her future husband ... where she worked as an associate on the international-practice team at a law firm in Beijing. The source told the WSJ that Katie was told by real lawyers that she could provide legal analysis based on her law degree and international transaction experience.
