When Psaki took the podium on Wednesday night in an unusual appearance on opening day for an incoming press secretary, she was praised by Biden’s allies and some reporters for bringing back a “normal” presence to the role. Aware that a large percentage of Americans had just watched her version of “normal” leave the building, Ms. Psaki moved away from that word and emphasized another: truth.
“If the president were here with me today, he would say that he works for the American people,” said Psaki. “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 remarkable departure from the message that emanated from Trump’s White House.
For a while, there was no message because a Trump press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, refused to hold any meetings. Another, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, did not respond when asked in the conference room whether she, like Trump, considered the news to be enemies of the American people.
The main spokesperson that a president installs is the face of management and tends to reflect who the president is as a leader. On the second day of the Trump administration in 2017, Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, channeled his boss’s anger over an elementary issue for the new president: the size of the crowd.
The Biden Administration
It was “the largest audience to witness an inauguration – period – both personally and worldwide,” said Spicer to a perplexed press. It was a performance that Spicer later recognized as a personal embarrassment, which he said he regretted.
“What Trump wanted was an extension of himself, to be someone who said what he expected to be true, not what was true,” said Robert Gibbs, Obama’s first press secretary. “As soon as the press secretary took over, he closed the instruction room as an effective vehicle for explaining anything.”
It only took one instruction for Trump administration officials to start giving Psaki the kind of treatment they felt they had undergone. One line of criticism on Thursday – ironic, considering the government’s record – was that it delivered the briefing without wearing a mask and that Biden showed up at the Lincoln Memorial without one on Wednesday night, although the president was asking government officials to wear masks on federal land.