Jen Psaki to Host Weekly Sunday Show on MSNBC

Jen Psaki is getting promoted to the anchor chair at MSNBC.

MSNBC announced Tuesday that the former press secretary to President Joe Biden is getting her own weekly show, Inside With Jen Psaki, airing Sundays at noon and on Peacock afterwards. It will premiere March 19.

Psaki’s show comes after MSNBC gave a weekend show to Symone Sanders, another former spokesperson of the Biden administration. Variety notes that Psaki’s program will cut into time that Alex Witt previously anchored, but she will continue to host Saturdays from noon to 2 p.m., and she’ll take over for Psaki when her show ends at 1 p.m.

The show, which could be MSNBC’s attempt to muscle into the Sunday political talk show genre dominated by the broadcast networks, will have something of an uphill climb. MSNBC has always struggled with weekend ratings, and regularly lands behind second place CNN and first place Fox News in the noon timeslot.

Psaki is known for being a fierce advocate for the Biden administration while she was press secretary. In her MSNBC role, she has interspersed her positive commentary about the Democrats with her frank assessments of the difficulties they face. The New York Times spoke with Psaki about the news and reported that “she hoped to invite Republicans onto her program, and NBC representatives, seeking to emphasize her independence, pointed to her occasional on-air quibbles with the Biden administration.”

“I am not going on television to be a mouthpiece,” Psaki said. “I’m very conscious of the fact that people know who I am because I was standing behind a podium speaking on behalf of Joe Biden… I am not going to gratuitously attack him, nor am I going to gratuitously applaud him. If he deserves applause, I will applaud him. If he deserves critique, I will critique him.”

The upcoming show was described as a mix of “policy and political discussions with lighter fare like human-interest profiles of politicians, celebrities, and athletes.”