[ad_1]
WASHINGTON (AP) – After four years in which President Donald Trump has been his own chief spokesperson and frequently peddling false information and conspiracy theories in the process, successor Joe Biden is committed to returning to a more traditional communication with Americans.
Much of this work will go to Jen Psaki, Biden’s choice for White House press secretary. She is a seasoned communications employee who has worked on numerous high-profile Democratic campaigns and held leadership positions under President Barack Obama, including Deputy Press Secretary and White House Director of Communications, as well as spokesperson for the State Department.
She will assume the role at a critical time, in the face of an audience skeptical of messages from institutions and a media body whose relations with the White House were very strained during the Trump era. Psaki, who turned 42 on Tuesday, is well known in Washington, but she’s not a household name.
Again.
“This post is becoming one of the best-known people representing both administration and government,” said Robert Gibbs, a former Obama press secretary. “She will be recognized during her travels abroad. She will be recognized when she goes to the grocery store.
Trump went through four press secretaries and often preferred to engage directly with the electorate, tweeting around the clock or holding his own press briefings – especially at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The president and his media team often disagreed with White House reporters while regularly spreading lies.
One of Trump’s press secretaries, Stephanie Grisham, never held a single briefing during his tenure. Her most recent pick, Kayleigh McEnany, used his sporadic briefings to scold reporters about their choice of questions, lecture them about the content of their stories and reinforce the president’s baseless claims.
Biden has vowed to restore daily press briefings, and Psaki says she considers the heart of her new job to be restoring trust in the government, especially during the pandemic.
“It’s hard to imagine now how different it’s going to be a few months from now,” said Stuart Stevens, chief strategist of Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign when Psaki was the press secretary for the reelection campaign. ‘Obama.
Stevens, a fierce critic of Trump, said that after inauguration day Jan. 20, White House communications staff will not be “evaluated on their willingness to lie for the president.”
Former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough recalled that Psaki once walked into his office and “pushed back quite strongly” on a political point, seeking “answers that she knew were being taken. would ask him the question ”. He said the exchange pissed him off and impressed him at the same time.
“She wasn’t a passive participant who just took messages to convey,” McDonough said.
Yet simply going back to the way things were under the Obama administration is not something all journalists look forward to. While its relations with the press were not as combative as that of the current administration, the Obama White House tightly controlled access to information, obstructed many Freedom of Information Act requests, and offered an aggressive turn on key events.
He also used the Espionage Act of 1917 in unprecedented ways, suing more people for leaking sensitive information to the public than all the previous presidents combined.
Harold Holzer, former congressional press secretary and author of “Presidents and the Press”, said many White House journalists “were horrified by their treatment in the Obama administration.”
“They were told to check the White House website for answers to their questions, Obama never showed up … unless it was to go and give a cupcake on his birthday. someone, he didn’t respond to FOIA requests, ”Holzer said.
Psaki has previously led calls with reporters to discuss the progress of Biden’s transition to the White House, although these have not come daily. Biden, meanwhile, has only held two official press conferences since polling day. Trump went weeks after his 2016 victory without calling a press conference, but his team provided daily updates by phone to reporters.
Holzer noted that Biden “is friendly, but he is guarded and he will be more protective.”
The combativeness of the presidential press predates Trump and Obama.
John Adams signed a sedition law banning “malicious writing” on the president and the executive branch. Abraham Lincoln jailed editors during the Civil War, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged a reporter to come to the area and wear a donkey cap. At the start of Bill Clinton’s tenure, the hallway between the briefing room and the press secretary’s office was closed to reporters – sparking an uproar in their ranks and a reversal of policy.
“It’s happened before. It’s just that it wasn’t on social media, ”Holzer said.
A native of Stamford, Connecticut, and a graduate of William & Mary, Psaki is part of an all-female senior communications team for the White House Biden. She declined an interview request through a spokesperson for Biden’s transition team.
McDonough recalled Psaki’s recruitment to the State Department’s White House on behalf of the president in 2015 – and she said she had a family and nothing would stop her from achieving that goal.
“I’ll never forget having that conversation with her and how insistent she was,” McDonough said.
Psaki and her husband, Gregory Mecher, have two children aged 2 and 5.
Gibbs worked closely with Psaki in the Obama press office and said she has a good relationship with Biden and with reporters, excels at scheduling posts and can be “quiet in a building that even the best day of administration, is a bit chaotic. . ”
“You get calls at 2 am from the situation room, you read the news early,” Gibbs said of the position Psaki is taking. “You have to be prepared to react to what you know is going to happen and what you have no idea is going to happen. And it really doesn’t stop from the moment you start the job until the moment you finish it. ”
Her current and former colleagues say Psaki takes care of those around her, even the people she far outclasses. An Obama communications intern in 2008 recalled that Psaki provided an air mattress to use for the summer after a housing confusion.
Biden’s aides say the president-elect chose Psaki because she made a point for the Obama press office on the economy, especially stimulus spending – an issue the vice president of the Biden era and the man he chose as his administration’s first chief of staff, Ron Klain, were prominent voices. That’s important since Biden has pledged to spend billions to create green jobs and improve infrastructure to better tackle climate change and reduce economic inequality while reviving the post-pandemic economy.
Psaki also has extensive foreign policy experience from his time at the State Department. That, combined with her years in the White House, makes her one of the most experienced people in the practice to take on the role of press secretary while giving her in-depth knowledge of key issues, aides say.
Psaki is also remembered for his tense interactions with reporters during State Department briefings. Videos of some of them have now started to resurface in Russia. State media often criticize American politicians, but in the past have chosen Psaki, transforming his last name into a verb, “Psaking,” intended to denote errors in speaking publicly.
Still, Stevens, the 2012 Romney chief strategist, said any media dust would be anchored in a public and political reality that evaporated in the Trump days.
“I’m sure she’s going to have a lot of fights with reporters, and reporters are going to have frustrations. And that’s how it should be, ”he said. “But they will be people living in the same universe. They will not wonder if gravity is a reasonable phenomenon.
[ad_2]
Source link