Fox News White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrch Says MSNBC and CNN Had ‘Bidding War’ Over Jen Psaki
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was the subject of a “bidding war” between CNN and MSNBC, according to Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.
At Friday’s White House press briefing, Psaki’s first since testing Covid-positive for a second time, the press secretary tried her best to skirt the MSNBC-shaped elephant in the room, refusing to confirm reports she’s headed to MSNBC in the next month or so.
On this week’s edition of The Fox News Rundown podcast, host Jared Halpern asked Ms. Heinrich about Psaki’s departure, and Heinrich revealed her own reporting on the story:
MR. HALPERN: I’ll finish with this off-topic, but some reporting that you were able to confirm here late this week about the future of the press secretary, Jen Psaki. It sounds like in a couple of weeks, couple of months, you’ll be asking your questions to someone new. What’s this reporting you can share?
MS. HEINRICH: So we have confirmed, from a source familiar with the situation, that Jen Psaki will be leaving her post here at the White House in the coming weeks. Sometime this spring, she’s going to be taking a job at MSNBC. I was told that there was a bidding war between CNN and MSNBC to get her on board. There are some, you know, legal stipulations about how she has to go about her departure and contract signing, in terms of, you know, federal ethics rules. So she wants to be, you know, have her i’s dotted and t’s crossed on that front. But we do know she’s going to be leaving. There have been some reports from other outlets which I don’t have the details on, but Axios, for instance, reported that she’s going to be taking a show on Peacock to their streaming service, and then would also, you know, lend her voice to the programing on the cable channel during the day as well.
MR. HALPERN: The timing of the departure is not a big surprise, right? Jin’s kind of talked about not being on board for the full first term, right?
MS. HEINRICH: Yeah, she we’ve known, you know, for a while that she was going to head out, I think it was, you know, pretty much too soon after she got into this job that the expectation was that she would do it for a year. You know, she was out of government before this after having been in government for the Obama administration. So she sort of came back to this government job and didn’t plan on staying in it long term. And a year is, you know, it’s a good run for a press secretary. We don’t know who’s going to follow her up, but we are waiting to see.
MR. HALPERN: They’ve almost been auditioning the last couple of weeks. Well, we’ll stay tuned for that.
Ms. Psaki was a CNN contributor prior to joining the Biden administration.
Watch above via Fox News Radio.
