Toe me. Psaki takes the podium on Wednesday night in an extremely unusual appearance of Inauguration Day for an incoming press secretary, she is praised by Biden’s allies and some reporters for bringing back a ‘normal’ presence in the role. Aware that a large percentage of Americans had just left the building after their version of ‘normal’, Ms. Psaki stayed away from the word and emphasized another: truth.
“If the president stood by me here today, he would say he works for the American people,” she said. Psaki said. “I work for him, so I also work for the American people, but his goal and his commitment is to bring transparency and truth back to the government, to share the truth, even when it’s hard to hear.”
It was a striking departure from the message emanating from the Trump White House.
There was no message for a while because one Trump press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, refused to hold briefings. Another, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, would not answer when asked in the information room whether she, like Mr. Trump, the news media enemies of the American people do not consider.
The chief spokesman who installs a president is the face of the government and tends to reflect who the president is as leader. On the second day of the Trump administration, in 2017, Mr. Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, channeled his boss’ anger over an essential issue for the new president: crowd size.
The Biden Administration
It was “the largest audience that has ever experienced an inauguration period – both personally and around the world”, said Mr. Spicer read to an astonished press corps. It was a performance that Mr. Spicer later admitted was a personal embarrassment, and he said he regretted it.
“What Trump wanted was an extension of himself, that someone would say what he was hoping for, and not what was true,” said Robert Gibbs, the first press secretary of Mr. Obama, said. “After the press secretary took over the role, it closed the information hall as an effective vehicle to explain anything.”
It took only one briefing for the Trump administration to tell Ms. Psaki to start giving the kind of treatment they felt they had endured. One criticism on Thursday – an ironic given that the administration’s record – was that she had it the information session delivered without wearing a mask, and that Mr. Biden appeared without one at the Lincoln Memorial Wednesday night, though the president asked government workers to wear masks on federal ground.