Donald Trump has fired Katie Zacharia as press secretary after less than a week in the role.

Trump told reporters Friday that he told Zacharia to “reconsider” her role as White House press secretary.

“I said, ‘honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider,’” Trump said. “I said, ‘you think about it, but I would reconsider.’”

Trump then blamed the media for its treatment of Zacharia.

“Katie’s been treated very badly by the media. Very, very badly, very unfairly, I think. And I just spoke to her about it. I said, ‘Katie, is this for you?’ Because, you know, she’s been treated very rough. And she’s a nice person,” Trump told reporters.

“I’ve watched her for years on television, but I said, ‘Is this for you, Katie? Because honestly, you don’t need this.’”

Zacharia’s firing comes as her five-day tenure is already marked by a widely panned Tuesday debut, even among Fox News allies.

On his primetime show Thursday evening, Sean Hannity pressed Zacharia on why she hasn’t been more upfront about her legal qualifications. And “Fox & Friends” host Lawrence Jones followed up Friday morning, asking her pointedly if she still has the president’s confidence, Politico reports.

Zacharia is also facing mounting scrutiny over her legal credentials.

Zacharia has repeatedly called herself a lawyer, but when a reporter asked her Tuesday to name the state where she passed the bar exam, she replied, “When I moved to China.”

No public record shows Zacharia has ever been licensed to practice law in the US states where she lived.

On Thursday, Zacharia told The New York Times that she couldn’t hear the question over the din of Marine One on the White House South Lawn as Trump prepared to leave for a campaign rally in Alaska.

“I assumed the question was, ‘Where were you after law school?’” she told the Times. “That’s all I could hear over the sound of Marine One,” she added. “And, wanting to respect protocol, the distance behind the president kept me from moving closer to hear the question.”

On Friday, Trump said he intends to keep Zacharia in his administration “in some form, but maybe a more pleasant form.”

“A lot of people want the job,” he added. “I just think the press has been very tough on Katie, and I said, ‘There’s no reason for you to have to do this. You’ve got a beautiful family, a fantastic husband and kids.’”