4.6 β’ 7.7K Ratings
ποΈ 6 May 2021
β±οΈ 60 minutes
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Press Secretary Jen Psaki didn’t envision herself returning to the White House after serving as Communications Director under President Obama, but when President Joe Biden asked her to join his team, she agreed. She now speaks on behalf of the Biden administration and holds near-daily press briefings, which she called just the tip of the iceberg of her responsibilities. Jen joined David to talk about how the constant flow of information shapes her communication strategy, what the job of press secretary actually looks like, why comparisons between the Obama and Biden administrations miss the mark, and her expectation for a short-lived stint in her current role.
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0:00.0 | Music |
0:06.0 | And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files, with your host, David Axelrod. |
0:18.0 | I've known and admired Jen Saki for a very long time. She traveled with the press on Barack Obama's campaign plane in 2007 and 2008. |
0:28.0 | She held several high-level communications jobs and his administration, including spokesperson for the State Department. |
0:34.0 | Now she's brought that wealth of experience and in size of mind and winning personal style to her post as White House Press Secretary under President Joe Biden. |
0:42.0 | I sat down with her yesterday to talk about the first hundred days for him and her. Here's that conversation. |
0:49.0 | Music |
0:57.0 | Jen Saki, it is always great to see you. We've been friends for a long time. |
1:03.0 | And I was thinking today way back to 2007 when you were wrangling reporters for us on the campaign plane. |
1:13.0 | I thought those reporters are now very big deals and the media industry, right? |
1:19.0 | As are you. Like, that's what happens. People would talent move up in life. But you know, back then, it was June of that year. |
1:27.0 | I think that Apple rolled out the iPhone. We were all using blackberries. There was no Instagram, no Snapchat. Twitter was in its infancy. |
1:37.0 | But what's different now than then because it seems like the pace and the challenges are much greater. |
1:45.0 | It is so significantly different. And even as you said in that 12 year span and a big driver of that, there's no question is Twitter. |
1:54.0 | At least in my world every single day. Facebook, no question a little bit in the news today. But is a driver of getting content out. |
2:04.0 | Obviously, there's lots of questions about misinformation, etc. But Twitter is where it's a big driver of the media conversation. |
2:12.0 | It's a big driver of news, gathering, news sharing. And oftentimes it can give an indication of where a certain storyline is going to go on a daily basis. |
2:24.0 | And nobody wants to really admit that, but that continues to be very much the case. So one of the things that's massively changed, maybe back before 12 years ago, because we had the internet then. |
2:35.0 | But is that it's no longer that you have to wake up. I don't wake up every day in part is because I have to be schoolers. And I don't really have a luxury of like sitting down and. |
2:45.0 | I'm, like, sitting down. And I'm slying out hard newspapers across my kitchen table. That's my dream. I would love to do that. Most days, some day. |
2:55.0 | Some day, but the news cycle is so fast that even what's in the print newspaper is rarely going to be what we're going to talk about at the briefing that day. |
3:06.0 | what the latest thing is and it is a constant. There's really no moment of rest. |
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