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Here's the MAGA host taking credit for Katie Zacharia’s appointment to press secretary

Buck Sexton: “I have been maneuvering for months behind the scenes telling everybody that I know in D.C. and in this Trump White House who will listen that she is the absolute best option here”

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Helena Hind

Published 10/15/26

Update 10/16/26: President Donald Trump fired Katie Zacharia as White House press secretary after only five days on the job. Buck Sexton and co-host Clay Travis addressed her firing during the October 16 edition of their show, with Sexton admitting her press conference was “a little shaky” and that her initial hiring was “a shock.” He noted that he knows Zacharia only through the show and he's “actually never met her in person.” He continued, “Not the right role at the right time, you know, she’s got four kids. … Not everybody’s built for the fire.” Sexton floated White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly to replace Zacharia.

After President Donald Trump announced on October 9 that he had appointed Katie Zacharia as the new White House press secretary, right-wing media figure Buck Sexton claimed he had been rallying for Zacharia to get the job.

According to Sexton, he had been “maneuvering for months behind the scenes telling everybody that I know in D.C. and in this Trump White House who will listen that she is the absolute best option here.” He later added that he “tried to bring it up when we were in the White House with Trump” but was interrupted by a phone call from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. (On September 28, Sexton and his co-host Clay Travis met with Trump in the Oval Office and had "conversations with key White House figures and insiders such as Marco Rubio, Karoline Leavitt, Natalie Harp, Stephen Miller, and Susie Wiles.”)

Citation

From the October 9, 2026, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Sexton floated Zacharia for press secretary in August, saying, “Personally, I think she would be fantastic in the role.”

Zacharia’s first press conference on October 13 reportedly sparked internal turmoil at the White House, with one staffer calling the press conference “brutal” and others describing it to CNN as “unusual, awkward, stilted and, at times, uncomfortable.” It has since been reported that even though Trump referred to her as an “attorney,” Zacharia never passed the bar exam.

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On Friday, March 20, a woman identified as "Linda from Arizona" called into aright-wing radio program, "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show," with a suggestion: sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to airports. President Donald Trump later did exactly that, and his supporters praised the move as a way to help U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers who are feeling overwhelmed as a partial shutdown of the federal government drags on.

Linda's main concern, however, wasn't helping TSA employees, but upsetting liberals and progressives. Linda told the hosts, "I think it would set their hair on fire" — to which one of them responded, "Democrats would go absolutely insane."

In an article published on March 25, Salon's Amanda Marcotte notes that Trump's idea to send ICE agents to airports appeared to come from Linda — a move that, the journalist stresses, did nothing to ease the long lines at U.S. airports.

Marcotte explains, "Both Linda and the hosts were blunt that the goal was not actually helping the Transportation Security Administration run more efficient checkpoints, but to trigger the liberals…. Liberals hate ICE, the logic went, so why not inflict ICE on liberals and make them squeal? But the MAGA coalition has not been known for its logic, and it's clear from the conversation that no one involved was really thinking this through. Instead, the scheme was rooted in a childish — and sadistic — impulse to bully."

The headaches at U.S. airports are illustrated by passenger Will Frampton. During a March 24 appearance on MS NOW, Frampton told host Chris Jansing that he showed up at Atlanta's airport five hours early for a flight — but missed it because he spent nine hours waiting in a TSA security line.

According to Marcotte, the ICE-in-airports idea is hurting, not helping, Trump.

"After the idea percolated up from Linda to Clay-and-Buck and then to Fox News, Trump thought it was a stroke of genius," Marcotte writes. "Since he couldn't admit that he got the idea from a random woman in Green Valley, Arizona, he took credit for it on Monday, (March 23), comparing himself to the man who invented the paperclip in the process. What is remarkable is that everyone involved — all of them, from Linda to Trump himself — are so consumed with the desire to trigger the liberals that no one stopped to wonder if the plan to put ICE in airports would backfire, as it appears to be doing."

Marcotte continues, "Early reports show ICE is doing nothing to speed up security lines, many of which have hours-long waits due to Republicans' refusal to pass a Democratic proposal to fund the TSA directly while still withholding DHS funding. The presence of ICE is instead ratcheting up tensions at the already stress-laden airports. Federal immigration officers can't do the real work of screening passengers, but they can harass and manhandle people suspected of being immigrants. Despite credulous media reports perpetuating the belief that ICE has been deployed to help TSA agents, every indication is that Trump's goal is to make already-miserable traveling experiences even worse."

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The Jesse Kelly Show (formerly known as America Now and The Buck Sexton Show) is a three-hour early evening conservative talk radio show hosted by Jesse Kelly, and carried by Premiere Networks, a subsidiary of iHeartMedia, Inc. It is broadcast live 6 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time on weekdays. The show mainly covers politics, and under former hosts, was intended as a broad-audience rundown of the day's news events, including entertainment topics, which was rare for a show on American talk radio in the 2010s.[citation needed] It airs on its affiliates either live or on tape delay, along with distribution through the iHeartRadio app and podcast providers.

Originally hosted by Andy Dean, America Now debuted on August 8, 2011.[1] Joe Pagliarulo (known as "Joe Pags" and based at WOAI in San Antonio) replaced Dean as interim host beginning August 11, 2014.[2] Pagliarulo ceded hosting duties to Meghan McCain (daughter of Senator John McCain) on July 15, 2015. McCain left the program on January 31, 2017, deciding to focus on television work instead.

Premiere Networks announced on February 1, 2017, that Buck Sexton would become the new host. He began hosting the show on February 6.[3] The show has since become a more traditional conservative talk show during his run. In early 2018, the America Now title was removed, and the program was rebranded as The Buck Sexton Show, a title previously used on his radio program with a video simulcast for TheBlaze from 2014 until 2017. Sexton's video simulcast moved to The First TV in October 2019.

On May 27, 2021, Premiere Networks announced that Clay Travis would be teamed with Sexton, and that the two would take over the noon–3 p.m. ET timeslot on June 21, 2021, as The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. The new program serves as the official replacement for**The Rush Limbaugh Show**, following a transitional period after Limbaugh died on February 17.[4][5][6]

On June 28, 2021, Jesse Kelly took over the timeslot under the title The Jesse Kelly Show. Since 2020, Kelly has been based at KPRC in Houston, a station owned by Premiere Networks parent company iHeartMedia, Inc. He had been in limited syndication through Key Networks.[7]