Jen Psaki

After the country vanquished tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump last November, Jen Psaki, among others, promised that the days of unhinged 2 a.m. tweets from the executive branch were over. Instead, the Biden White House stacked its comms team with former Obama administration millennials more famous for their posturing on the ‘promise of hashtag’ and #UnitedForUkraine than for a cohesive message. Some things don’t change. Trump primarily used his Twitter feed to lash out at media critics and yell at athletes. But the Biden administration is also using Twitter, to guide its policy and messaging decisions by gleaning them from a willing media. Take White House chief of staff Ron Klain.

The Biden administration intends to notify Facebook about ‘problematic’ postings, such as questioning the COVID-19 vaccine. Jen Psaki, the White House spokesperson, suggests that if you’re problematic on one social-media site, you should be banned from them all. Big Tech, meet Big Sister. I suppose this is still America. If Donald Trump had said he’d use extra-legal leverage over Big Tech, most of the media would be crying ‘fascism’. Brian Stelter would decry an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment. Jeffrey Toobin would bang one out about bypassing Congress and the law. Minor academics would op-ed in the New York Times about the classically fascist ‘collusion’ between government and big business.

What exactly are the qualifications to host a show on CNN? The most obvious seems to be an astonishing lack of professional shame — and I’m not even talking about the circus act Chris Cuomo’s been doing for the past year. Reliable Sources is the most ironically named show in all of cable news, given that the guest roster regularly includes Dan Rather. On this Sunday’s episode, host Brian Stelter partook in a highly embarrassing act of professional self-debasement, in a segment in which he offered schoolgirl giggles and petty star-gazing over White House press secretary Jen Psaki. Stelter acted like a privileged fan of Psaki, giddy to just be basking in her celebrity aura for a brief moment of her precious time.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Tuesday that President Joe Biden will hold his first solo press conference on March 25, over two months after taking office. The administration scheduled the conference after weeks of journalists pointing out that Biden was the first president in 100 years to not hold formal court with the media within his first 33 days on the job. But sadly, unless the White House opens up the press conference to a wider array of journalists, this is just theater. The Biden administration has been responsible for an unprecedented crackdown on media access to the White House, which it has largely blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic.

The liars are being lied to and it is a sight to behold. White House press secretary Jen Psaki is offering the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Peter Alexander a tutorial on how to be patronizing in the briefing room — not that they need it. The most recent example came when Psaki said the Biden administration has a handle on the overwhelming influx of illegals at the southern border. This, by all accounts, is not true. CBS reported this that the number of unaccompanied minors in Border Patrol custody is at an all-time high. While the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC might not be screaming about kids in cages, they are quietly acknowledging unaccompanied children in overflow facilities. Words matter.