Chris Wallace Confronts Jen Psaki With Clip of What She Calls ‘Not One of My Better Moments’
CNN+ host Chris Wallace asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki for her reaction to a briefing room clip that she said was “not my finest moment.”
Mr. Wallace went in-depth with Ms. Psaki on the latest episode of the CNN+ series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, an interview series that has quickly distinguished itself on the fledgling service.
After some news of the day and a brief self-assessment by Psaki, Wallace told his guest “we’re going to review some of your moments in the briefing room now,” and quipped “We’re going to call it the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
“First of all, there were some bad and ugly. I can confirm that,” Psaki joked.
After questions about her handling of unruly reporters and her technique of interrogating a reporter’s premise, Wallace asked about one particular exchange, a contentious exchange between Psaki and NPR’s Mara Liasson about free Covid tests that sparked a lot of attention and several attempts to add context.
Wallace played the clip, and asked Psaki about it.
MR. WALLACE: That didn’t look so good when the White House, two weeks later, said if you want a free COVID test, we’ll give it to any American.
MS. LIASSON: Well, to be fair, Chris, we did not send them to every American in their house. We sent them to people who wanted the tests. But what I will say, and I do not think that was one of my better moments, is that I learned that you always need to include context. You are not, when you’re in the White House briefing… And you know this from from being one of the reporters who pushed White House press secretaries in the past. You are not having a conversation at a dinner party or a bar or with a friend. You always need to provide context and as many details as possible. In that same briefing, I probably had said thousands of words about tests and our our focus on increasing testing capacity and why we wanted people to have access to them and making them less expensive. But I didn’t do myself a service there in that moment. And actually, since then, I’ve tried to provide more context every time I answer questions, and that’s a, that was a good lesson learned for me this week.
Psaki is often asked about low points from briefings, and used to cite a wisecracking answer she gave about Space Force, but the Liasson exchange has supplanted that one.
Watch above via CNN+.
