‘That Was My Favorite’: Press Sec Turned MSNBC Star Jen Psaki Gushes Over Ex-Colleague’s Work on Biden Campaign
White House press secretary turned MSNBC host Jen Psaki gushed over a pair of senior staffers working on her old boss’s re-election campaign during a fawning interview she conducted for her new employer.
Her conversation with communications director Michael Tyler and deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty included a moment during which a smiling Psaki told the pair about her “favorite” campaign meme they’ve created so far.
“Let me ask you about another topic that comes up — I get asked about this a lot — is the president’s age,” noted Psaki in one instance before framing the topic as the invention of “right-wing efforts.”
“He’s the age he is, but it still is an issue to combat, right? It pops in polls. It is something that comes up in focus groups. You, Rob, were a part of I know, not alone, but kind of flipping the Dark Brandon meme to make it more of a winner, probably to the anger of the people who are screaming, you know, ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ at events. How do you combat this kind of ongoing attack on his age and these attacks and suggestions that he’s not up for the job?” she asked.
“So the American people know Joe Biden’s age, they also know that with that age comes wisdom, comes experience, comes judgment. That’s why they elected him in the first place. And I would also say that they understand that those qualities stand in stark contrast to everybody else on the other side, particularly as it relates to Donald Trump,” replied Tyler.
“Yeah, I mean, I think there’s like three different things that I think about when we’re tackling this. One is like the Dark Brandon stuff works because yes, it’s funny and yes, it’s sort of memey, but also it is based in that truth,” explained Flaherty before being cut off by an ecstatic Psaki.
“The aviators with like things shooting out of them? I don’t know if you were responsible for that, but that was my favorite,” she told Flaherty, who served as deputy assistant to the president and director of digital strategy at the White House during Psaki’s own tenure in the Biden administration.
“The best part about it is that we’re not actually responsible for it. It’s it’s a bunch of people who support the president who were doing it themselves. That speaks to a core truth about the president’s experience and his ability to get stuff done,” asserted Flaherty.
After watching the segment, Psaki then expressed optimism about the pair and Biden campaign more generally:
They need to figure out how to flip this into a strength, which is his experience, the years he spent working on foreign policy issues, the years he spent talking with leaders on Capitol Hill. They recognize this is a challenge, not that it’s validating — not that anyone should be validating it — but I do think they have a lot of thoughts.
If I can add one more thing that was interesting about my conversation with them, especially Rob, is that they have a, they were so excited, of course, when you were doing communications and digital strategy, when the president went out and gave these bold speeches, they’re like “Yes, we’re ready to go. We’re ready to do this!” A lot of the work they’re doing is traditional tactics like African-American radio, which the president did while he was in South Carolina. Local media, which you don’t always see on the cover of The New York Times every day, as well as a lot online that you don’t necessarily see. I mean, Rob told me that about 50% of the engagement on Instagram is actually private because people trust their neighbors. They trust, you know, valued voices. It’s not necessarily all public ads.
So they have a big strategy, we’ll see if it it works, we’re going to follow it closely, but I kind of spent some time with them to figure out what the tactics were.
Watch above via MSNBC.
