The ease with which reporters can reach President Donald Trump is “concerning,” according to Jen Psaki.
“The thing that is challenging, or concerning…is sometimes people, reporters, journalists, talk to a president and then they feel giddy about it,” President Biden’s former press secretary said Sunday on “Pod Save America.”
“They feel like, ‘oh, well I can call Donald Trump and like, I can talk to him, and he gives me all this access,” Psaki said on the podcast hosted by former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer. Psaki is now a host on MS NOW (formerly MSNBC).
“And there’s no way that doesn’t shade how they report things or talk about them, even if it’s not conscious,” she added.
Pfeiffer agreed with Psaki’s criticism of the Republican president.
“There is something that’s uncomfortable with the breathless selfie videos reporters are taking, which is like, ‘I just got off the phone with Trump and here’s what he told me,’ and it’s like, well what’s the context for that,” Pfeiffer said.
Both Pfeiffer and Psaki did say that they held “off the record conversations” with reporters to sway their coverage.
The liberal politicos’ unease at press access makes sense when one considers how much easier Trump is to reach than President Biden.
Through the first eleven months or so of Trump’s second term in office, the president “participated in at least 433 open press events that stretched from official remarks to impromptu gaggles outside of Air Force One to press conferences where the president interacted with the media,” Fox News previously reported.
In contrast, reporters found Biden much harder to reach for comment and direct questioning.
“The president takes questions several times a week,” Psaki said in March 2021, responding to criticism.
“He took questions actually twice yesterday, which is an opportunity for the people covering the White House to ask him about whatever news is happening on any given day,” the former press secretary said.
Yet even CNN had to admit in 2022 that the media generally had an easier time interviewing Trump during his first term in office than it did Biden.
Writing in 2022, Chris Cilizza acknowledged “it’s clear that in terms of overall availability to the media – particularly in more formal settings – Biden is lagging far behind the last two men to hold the presidency.”
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris would often struggle during live interviews and dodge opportunities for long conversations, such as her fateful decision to skip “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
[Featured image from ‘Pod Save America‘]
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