Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted just ten days in the job himself, is offering career advice to Katie Zacharia after her record-short stint as press secretary — and the spectacle of one swamp creature consoling another tells Americans everything about who cycles through power in this town.

Zacharia was out after less than a week, done in by a 14-minute briefing and scrutiny over her claim to be a lawyer despite never passing the California bar exam. Scaramucci, who turned his own firing into a media career and a 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris, is now the establishment press's go-to authority on White House flameouts. The real story isn't the length of either tenure — it's that the same revolving door keeps spinning regardless of who voters put in the Oval Office.

Zacharia's one and only briefing on October 13th lasted fourteen minutes, during which she announced that U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle would be "pursuing other career opportunities" and at one point referred to her husband as "my president," the New Yorker reported. Former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki called the briefing "basically an SNL skit." Sean Hannity, no enemy of this administration, pronounced it "widely panned," per Deadline.

The questions that sank her were straightforward: Zacharia had represented herself as a lawyer, but she never passed the California bar. Her professional background before the White House was thin — a brief stint as a Newsmax commentator and less than two months as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at DHS, according to the New Yorker. Before that, she worked at Zhong Lun, a law firm in Beijing. The New Yorker also noted that Zacharia had previously called John Podesta a pedophile and written that "the radical left Hollywood elitists are sick pedo cannibals," as well as sharing the claim that "8 in 10 women had a miscarriage after getting the COVID vaccine." Deadline omitted all of this background entirely, framing the story as pure spectacle.

Scaramucci posted on X that "Records are made to be broken" and later added: "Dear Katie Zacharia, speaking as the world's leading expert on short White House tenures: turn off the news and go enjoy your family. In time you'll realize that the Universe did you a major favor." He told the New Yorker more expansively: "That podium is a hard podium, as we all know. But the universe did her a favor. She shouldn't be in that job."

The New Yorker — the same outlet whose 2017 interview precipitated Scaramucci's own ouster — gave him a sympathetic platform to opine. Neither outlet asked the question that matters: why do people with thin résumés and no business in the briefing room keep getting installed in these roles in the first place?

Scaramucci himself is the case study. He spent ten days in the West Wing, then reinvented himself as a cable news anti-Trump voice and Harris surrogate. The same media ecosystem that mocks Zacharia's qualifications gave Scaramucci a second act because he now attacks the right people.

Zacharia departed with a statement of loyalty. "President Trump is a kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic, and hardworking man," she wrote on X. "It was an honor to work for him."

The Mooch is right that the podium is hard. What he won't say — and what the outlets giving him air won't ask — is that the same connected class keeps getting put behind it, regardless of qualifications or election results. Zacharia's out. Scaramucci's on vacation in Hawaii. The door keeps revolving.