Jen Psaki Laments the Lack of ‘Excellent’ Journalism Covering the Current White House, Bypassing Her Own Tenure

As a former Biden White House spokesperson, few people honestly expect Jen Psaki to deliver an objective assessment of President Donald Trump’s administration and the press office she previously ran. That said, asking us to ignore the details displayed during her run, and the ensuing years of President Joe Biden’s term, is a stretch that risks ligament damage.

Psaki was appearing with Peter Alexander on his new show at MS NOW, State of Play, discussing the makeup of the current White House press corps. Her critique has to do with those being admitted into that cloistered circle of excellence, but her description of what this leads to is where the real comedy is found. Yes, journalists rolling over like a puppy to please the administration is a problem, but to pretend this is something never before seen in the briefing room is simply laughable.

Alexander was seated in that chamber when Psaki was at the podium, and it is mirthful to see them decrying how there are those now in attendance who are willing to “spit out the Republican talking points.” Do they really expect us to forget the years of willful echoing of White House PR by the press mynah birds during the Biden years?

Psaki went on to explain why she sees this inclusion of more types of new outlets included in the press pool. It comes down to the fact that it makes for a less herdlike mentality delivering dispatches from that room.

Certainly, at least a portion of her complaint here concerns the move made by the press office to take over appointments on the White House press pool. That was a move that rankled the White House Correspondents Association, the previous body in charge of making those assignments. And it is a move that could be criticized, as it impacted the level of independence. But taken with the same approach, when things were in the hands of the WHCA, it did not exactly deliver independent results.

Hearing Psaki complaining that “people are not getting actual transparent information,” is just a little tough to choke down, coming from “Ms. Circleback” herself. How can she complain about a lack of transparency when she worked for the man who was known for going long durations without addressing the media at all? Biden gave formal press conferences with an eclipse-like frequency.

And on the matter of a compliant news group, her administration set the standard. Psaki does not want to be reminded of the darkly revealing issue of Biden being caught on film with press conference cheat sheets, which not only helped him keep his answers in line, but also included prepared questions from the press fed to him ahead of time.

The real hit in all of this is Psaki’s claim that today’s press room simply regurgitates the PR spin from the White House press office. By the final year in Biden’s term, the White House press was in full defense mode for the president. They actually battled back against reports of Biden’s diminishing condition, repeating the White House spin of video evidence being “cheap fakes” with the frequency of a dance track.

The book Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, is entirely centered on how the media “missed” (their word) Biden’s mental decline. The most exposing detail was delivered by Thompson in an interview he conducted on the promotional junket for their book.

Sitting with Leland Vittert from News Nation, Thompson detailed a conversation he had with a Biden White House official. This individual not only admitted they had fed false information about the president’s condition on the regular but also expressed shock at how the press simply repeated any falsehood they put out concerning the matter. As Thompson tells it, this official lectured him that, “you guys should not have believed us so easily.”

This is the environment that Psaki today wants to pretend was not in existence. We are to believe a willful and echoing press corps is somehow a novel entity, but that requires the record we are all familiar with to be completely ignored.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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