Jen Psaki Roasts Democrats Who ‘Drive Me Insane’ With The Way They Talk ‘Like PhDs’: ‘That’s Not How You Win Elections’
MSNBC’s Jen Psaki told Rahm Emanuel that some Democrats drive her “insane” with the way they talk about issues — “like we’re in a PhD thesis” — and said, “That’s not how you win elections.”
Psaki — a former Biden White House press secretary and current host of MSNBC’s Inside With Jen Psaki — launched a podcast called The Blueprint with Jen Psaki last week on “the lessons learned from the 2024 election and how Democrats will navigate a changing information environment especially under a second Trump term.”
On this week’s episode, Psaki spoke to Emanuel about how Democrats can sound more authentic and less like “adjunct professors at a small liberal arts college of the Midwest”:
JEN PSAKI: So one of the things, and this is– I always laugh when people call me a Washington insider, which I maybe I am, but because I feel like I grew up in politics, like working on political campaigns.
And what’s drives me crazy is the way sometimes Democrats talk. It drives me insane!
It’s like we’re in a PhD thesis on political academia, which is not how you win elections!
I you’ve talked about, you said– it’s so funny because I wrote it down.
“Democrats talk like we are adjunct professors at a small liberal arts college of the Midwest,” which I’m sure I would love, a small liberal arts college of the Midwest.
But like, that’s not how most people talk.
And I’ve noticed this since even hosting a show like I’ll have people on and you’re like, “Are you reading from a sheet of talking point? I’m asking you about the threat to our country of this and you’re talking about something else.”.
How do you untangle candidates and people running for office from that?
RAHM EMANUEL: Well, first of all, I’m not sure it’s some part of it’s trained, but some part of it’s authentic.
JEN PSAKI: Uh-huh.
RAHM EMANUEL: And you got to I mean, now again, I’m a product of an understudy of Bill Clinton. I mean, he was a master of just trying to you know, he always said, “Well, that issue is gonna, that’s going to cut like a hot knife through butter.”.
I mean, he just knew how to he knew how to talk, how people could understand without talking down to them.
And I think that you can train people on certain things, but it’s more how do you do an analogy? How do you make sure that what you’re trying to say, you compare it to what you pick to compare it to. So people get a sense of what you’re trying to explain.
And there’s a way of using terminology. But you’re right a lot. I mean, Democrats, we love people to know that we’re smart and that we go our PhD. We’re gonna to show you our thesis.
And it comes across not only that, as a self and close conversation. It is tremendously dismissive of them. The audience.
We’re actually talking to ourselves about how important, how smart we are rather than how to make sure that they understand. We’re more interested in the sound of our own voice.
Watch above via MSNBC’s The Blueprint with Jen Psaki.
