Oct 22, 2026 · 56 min · 6 segments
In this edition of The World According to Irina Tsukerman, the bi-weekly geopolitical series on The KAJ Masterclass LIVE, host Khudania Ajay (KAJ) is joined by Irina Tsukerman, a national security and…
Irina TsukermanGuest
Khudania AjayHost
So let's straight away get to one of the big topics in the last few days that made a lot of noise and still refusing to die down about this Katie Zakaria thing.
How should somebody who has heard about this, who has understood a bit but do not know the full story and want to understand your perspective, what happened, what is this Katie Zakaria story all about, Irina?
So, essentially, Katie Zakaria was a very short-lived White House press secretary who lasted less than one Scaramucci.
In other words, she only lasted five days, whereas Scaramucci in the past lasted 11.
He's a billionaire who made a brief but comic appearance during Trump's first term.
Katie Zakaria was supposed to be replacing Caroline Levitt, who got the job at Fox News.
The first briefing on October 13th lasted approximately 14 minutes and attracted criticism for the fact that she was essentially reading it off the page and was completely unprepared.
She described herself as a lawyer despite having failed the California bar exam and she had no authority to practice law.
I guess technically she could be described as a lawyer, but there was an implication that she was an attorney at law who was admitted to practice, which was not the case.
She also claimed that she passed the bar in China, subsequently saying that she misheard the question.
Her previous positions included communications work for Trump media, and she also briefly worked at the Department of Homeland Security.
But the biggest issue, of course, is not Katie Zakaria's personal shortcomings.
The biggest issue is regarding a scandal involving many more other people, including Trump's confidante Alina Haba, who got married to a much younger Turkish businessman billionaire.
who was ousted from her position for essentially being completely unqualified for that as well.
So what that story involves is that Trump claimed control over billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets after US operation to remove Maduro from power and bring him to the US in August.
Trump announced a major oil agreement with Venezuela, but the information about its terms remains limited.
Venezuelan officials and US officials have conflicting accounts of the actual arrangement.
In January, Trump sought an executive order which would protect Venezuelan all revenues held in US treasury accounts from attachment by creditors.
However, how those revenues are disposed of, the contractual arrangements and the beneficiaries of transactions, all of that remains unclear.
And Zakariya and her commentary and her involvement in that also remains in question.
So let's straight away get to one of the big topics in the last few days that made a lot of noise and still refusing to die down about this Katie Zakaria thing.
How should somebody who has heard about this, who has understood a bit but do not know the full story and want to understand your perspective, what happened, what is this Katie Zakaria story all about, Irina?
So, essentially, Katie Zakaria was a very short-lived White House press secretary who lasted less than one Scaramucci.
In other words, she only lasted five days, whereas Scaramucci in the past lasted 11.
He's a billionaire who made a brief but comic appearance during Trump's first term.
Katie Zakaria was supposed to be replacing Caroline Levitt, who got the job at Fox News.
The first briefing on October 13th lasted approximately 14 minutes and attracted criticism for the fact that she was essentially reading it off the page and was completely unprepared.
She described herself as a lawyer despite having failed the California bar exam and she had no authority to practice law.
I guess technically she could be described as a lawyer, but there was an implication that she was an attorney at law who was admitted to practice, which was not the case.
She also claimed that she passed the bar in China, subsequently saying that she misheard the question.
Her previous positions included communications work for Trump media, and she also briefly worked at the Department of Homeland Security.
But the biggest issue, of course, is not Katie Zakaria's personal shortcomings.
The biggest issue is regarding a scandal involving many more other people, including Trump's confidante Alina Haba, who got married to a much younger Turkish businessman billionaire.
who was ousted from her position for essentially being completely unqualified for that as well.
So what that story involves is that Trump claimed control over billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets after US operation to remove Maduro from power and bring him to the US in August.
Trump announced a major oil agreement with Venezuela, but the information about its terms remains limited.
Venezuelan officials and US officials have conflicting accounts of the actual arrangement.
In January, Trump sought an executive order which would protect Venezuelan all revenues held in US treasury accounts from attachment by creditors.
However, how those revenues are disposed of, the contractual arrangements and the beneficiaries of transactions, all of that remains unclear.
And Zakariya and her commentary and her involvement in that also remains in question.
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