Stop calling Katie Zacharia a DEI hire

Recently, former White House press secretary Katie Zacharia was asked where she passed the bar exam and replied, “When I moved to China.” 

Three days later, she was fired from her position. Online, she earned the nickname DEI hire.

I understand the joke. The Trump administration spent nearly two years tearing down diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the name of merit, then handed one of the government’s most visible jobs to someone who could not get through a 15-minute briefing. But the punchline only works if you accept that DEI means unqualified. That is the lie used against Black, brown, LGBTQ, and disabled professionals, and we should stop repeating it.

She was hired for loyalty

Zacharia was named press secretary on Oct. 9 to replace Karoline Leavitt. She later said she misheard the bar question, then admitted two days later that she never passed the exam. Her five days are the shortest tenure of any press secretary on record.

No diversity program put her there. On Real America’s Voice, she told conservative host Jack Posobiec how she caught the president’s eye.

“I tracked every news hit to be in accordance with what policies he was pushing forward,” she said. “Because my philosophy is I’m on TV enough where if he sees me and he likes me, then I will be recruited for the job.”

The “DEI hire” joke has been a weapon aimed most often at Black people. Republican lawmakers called Kamala Harris a DEI hire in 2024. Katie Miller, a former Trump administration official, called Karine Jean-Pierre, the first Black and first openly LGBTQ White House press secretary, “evidence DEI doesn’t work.” 

After a passenger jet and an Army helicopter collided near Washington in January 2025, killing 67 people, Trump suggested diversity hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration was to blame before investigators weighed in.

Texas closed diversity offices at public universities through Senate Bill 17 in 2024. In January 2025, Trump revoked a 1965 executive order from President Lyndon B. Johnson that required federal contractors to practice affirmative action. Each move rested on the same claim that diversity efforts reward people who did not earn their place.

DEI was never built that way. It was built to widen the pool so qualified people shut out for generations could compete. When we use “DEI hire” as an insult, even against someone we have no reason to defend, we sign off on the other side’s definition.

To be sure, the joke lands a real point about hypocrisy. An administration that preaches merit should answer for this hire. Commentator Van Jones made that case on X.

“If this woman were Black, the whole conversation would be about DEI,” Jones wrote. “Funny how when white employees fail, nobody mentions THEIR race or ethnicity.”

He is right, which is why the label does not fit. We can call out hypocrisy without borrowing language built to discredit us. This was a loyalty hire. That is a MAGA problem, not a DEI one.

Zacharia did not stumble because someone lowered the bar for her. She stumbled because the bar was never there. Call her unqualified. Call her unprepared. Just stop calling her a DEI hire. Every Black woman who has ever been first in the room knows what that phrase costs.