Best of The Axe Files: Jen Psaki

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2021

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we revisit our May 2021 conversation with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. 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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Transcript

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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 Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.
0:18.0	So as 2021 comes to an end, we're taking a little break, but sharing a couple of our favorite podcasts of the year.
0:25.0	This episode, recorded in May, is with an old friend, White House Press Secretary Jen Saki.
0:30.0	Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy it, and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy new year.
0:44.0	Jen Saki, it is always great to see you. We've been friends for a long time.
0:50.0	And I was thinking today, way back to 2007, when you were wrangling reporters for us on the campaign plane.
1:00.0	Those reporters are now very big deals and the media is right?
1:04.0	As are you, like, that's what happens.
1:07.0	People would talent move up in life, but you know, back then, it was June of that year, I think, that Apple rolled out the iPhone.
1:16.0	We were all using blackberries. There was no Instagram, no Snapchat.
1:21.0	Twitter was in its infancy. Tell me about what's different now than then, because it seems like the pace and the challenges are much greater.
1:32.0	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, at least in my world every single day.
1:44.0	Facebook, no question a little bit in the news today, but is a driver of getting content out.
1:51.0	Obviously, there's lots of questions about misinformation, et cetera.
1:55.0	But Twitter is where it's a big driver of the media conversation.
1:59.0	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.
2:11.0	Nobody wants to really admit that, but that continues to be very much the case.
2:17.0	So one of the things that's massively changed, maybe back before 12 years ago, because we had the internet then, but is that it's no longer that you have to wake up.
2:27.0	I don't wake up every day in part, it's because I have two preschoolers, and I don't really have a luxury of like sitting down and
2:33.0	just slaying out hard newspapers across my kitchen table. That's my dream. I would love to do that, but most days don't have to.
2:41.0	Someday, 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.
	...

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