SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This month saw the debut of MSNBC's newest primetime host, Jen Psaki. Now, she is far from the first White House official to emerge from the revolving door as a TV news star. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik has this profile.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Jen Psaki became famous delivering briefings and fielding questions as then-President Joe Biden's first press secretary. Here she was sparring with Fox's Peter Doocy in early 2022.
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JEN PSAKI: Do you have an alternative suggestion for how they should be tracked?
PETER DOOCY: I unfortunately have not been asked to make U.S. immigration policy. That's not my...
PSAKI: Well, today's your moment.
FOLKENFLIK: Psaki left the administration, became a pundit and then became a weekend host for MSNBC. Last June, she faced a crystallizing moment. Just moments after the close of Biden's disastrous debate, after then-former President Donald Trump, Psaki had to decide how to address what the nation had seen. She played it down the middle.
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PSAKI: ...Very distracting. And it's going to be very consuming for the campaign should he be replaced. They're going to be answering that question instead of breaking through on attacking Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: May I ask...
FOLKENFLIK: Ten days later, Psaki assessed Biden's performance in his interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos. Biden had wanted to regain traction.
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PSAKI: I mean, the speculation about Joe Biden's future has been rampant. The panic inside the Democratic Party has definitely not gone away.
FOLKENFLIK: Not exactly running defense for her old boss. I spoke with Psaki earlier this month about her aspirations for her new show.
PSAKI: I have points of view. I'm never going to go on television and tell people I don't care about abortion rights. And I have never been asked to be anything but my authentic self here, which I very much appreciate.
FOLKENFLIK: She's taking over the 9 p.m. slot Tuesdays to Fridays. And whether it's an interview with Illinois' Democratic governor, Biden's former transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, or a segment on Trump's latest outrage, Psaki has questions and thoughts.
PSAKI: The first block of the show is an opportunity to kind of explain to people, talk about what just happened, how it impacts them, what it means for their lives and who's fighting for them. 'Cause that's always the question people want to know. Like, who - what are people doing about it? It's not just, Trump is bad.
FOLKENFLIK: Erik Wemple has picked up on just that. He's the media critic for the opinion pages of The Washington Post. Wemple says Psaki is smart, tough and appealing - a battering ram, really, against what he sees as the president's offenses against civil liberties, due process and other core American principles.
ERIK WEMPLE: She really needs to be, on some level, an identity person for this huge crowd of liberals who need someone to give them hope.
FOLKENFLIK: Even so, when Wemple recently reviewed MSNBC's programming, he came away convinced that the network was failing its audiences by not allowing Trump's allies to make the best case possible and by not challenging Democratic pieties.
WEMPLE: On some level, I can understand why MSNBC is where it is, but it's still a terribly monolithic network.
FOLKENFLIK: I spoke to Psaki before Biden's announcement that he has advanced prostate cancer and before the release of the book "Original Sin," by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, on the failure of Biden administration officials to grapple with his cognitive lapses. Psaki reminded me she left the Biden White House in 2022.
PSAKI: I spent time with him every day, and I'd never seen the person who was on that debate stage.
FOLKENFLIK: Psaki says she has seen him once since, at a White House holiday party with her daughter.
PSAKI: Now, aging happens quickly. Did it happen aggressively in the year before, the six months before, the four months before? I don't know the answer to that question.
FOLKENFLIK: At my request, researchers at the Internet Archive reviewed the episodes on Psaki's new show. For the record, they found she hasn't brought that insider's insight to her viewers on Biden's health or mental acuity. I asked MSNBC yesterday whether Psaki had any additional comment on the Biden diagnosis or the book, but did not hear back. Psaki has instead been focusing attention on Trump and the threat she says he poses.
David Folkenflik, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEAN BROWN'S "BLUES ON THE BLVD., PT. 2") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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