Jen Psaki Accuses Trump Administration of Building ‘Kremlin-esque’ White House Press Corps Full of ‘Sycophants’

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki accused President Donald Trump and his administration of creating a “Kremlin-esque” press corps.

The MS NOW star joined Katie Couric on Thursday where she claimed the current White House press corps is full of Trump “sycophants” who get more opportunities to ask questions from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“More and more of the questions in there are by sycophants — by people who are not asking about news that the American people care about,” Psaki said.

The White House has made multiple changes to the White House press corps, including inviting in a “new media” seat for non-traditional media. They also recently blocked access to the Upper Press office without an appointment. Leavitt claimed reporters were caught “spying” on White House staff.

Psaki argued there are “fewer” journalists interested in covering important issues and asking hard questions.

She said:

They are getting a lot of the questions. There are some of the people who are in the press pools. This means that reporters who are there to cover MBS [Mohammed bin Salman] being at the White House or to cover [Volodymyr] Zelensky being at the White House or to ask these questions that Mary Bruce fortunately asked yesterday, there are fewer of them. You don’t know that and see that unless you’ve lived there, but that’s a huge, huge problem because it’s becoming more of a Kremlin-esque press corps.

Psaki went on to double down on her Russia comparison, recalling seeing government-controlled media in foreign trips.

“It does remind me so much when I was at the State Department and I traveled with John Kerry,” she said. “You’d have like the Kremlin press corps. I mean they were the ‘press corps’ from ‘media,’ I’m putting that in quotes. But they literally reported to the Kremlin, following the foreign secretary around and foreign minister around. That’s what I think maybe they want.”

Watch above via Katie Couric.