Psaki tries to strike a new tone in the White House briefing room

When Ms Psaki stepped onto the podium on Wednesday night in a very unusual appearance on the inauguration day for a new press secretary, she was praised by Mr Biden’s allies and some reporters for bringing back a presence ” normal ”in this role. Realizing that a large percentage of Americans had just watched their version of “normal” leave the building, Ms. Psaki stayed away from that word and emphasized another: the truth.

“If the President stood here with me today, he would say he is working for the American people,” Ms. Psaki said. “I work for him, so I also work for the American people, but his goal and his commitment is to bring transparency and truth back to government, to share the truth, even when it’s hard to hear.

It was a striking departure from the message that had emanated from Trump’s White House.

For a while there was no message as Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham declined to hold briefings. Another, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, did not respond when asked in the briefing room whether she, like Mr. Trump, viewed the media as the enemies of the American people.

The primary spokesperson that a president installs is the face of the administration and tends to reflect who the president is as leader. On the second day of the Trump administration, in 2017, Mr. Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, channeled his boss’s anger on a basic issue for the new president: the size of the crowd.

It was “the largest audience ever to attend a grand opening – period – both in person and around the world,” Spicer told a stunned press corps. It was a performance Mr. Spicer later recognized as a personal embarrassment, which he said he regretted.

“What Trump wanted was an extension of himself, who was someone who would say what he hoped to be true, not what was true,” said Robert Gibbs, M’s first publicist. Obama. “Once the press secretary took on this role, he closed the briefing room as an effective way to explain anything.

It only took one briefing for Trump administration officials to start giving Ms Psaki the kind of treatment they felt she had received. One line of criticism on Thursday – ironic given the administration’s record – was that she had delivered the briefing without wearing a mask, and that Mr. Biden had appeared at the Lincoln Memorial without a Wednesday night, even though the president was asking government employees to wear masks on federal lands.