When it comes to “familiar and trusted,” MSNBC knows how gullible its audience really is.
Jen Psaki has spent a career spewing lies on behalf of Democratic politicians. On Tuesday, MSNBC made it official – the press secretary for the Biden White House is going to be joining its staff.
Psaki will be featured in political coverage this fall and eventually will have her own show on the liberal network.
MSNBC’s announcement made it clear that viewers can expect to hear about the same material in her private-sector job that she’s been shoveling out while on the government payroll. That might have seemed like smart marketing, but conservative commenters didn’t hold back the mockery.
“Jen’s sharp wit and relatability combined with the mastery of the subjects she covers have made her a household name across the nation,” MSNBC President Rashida Jones said in a statement Tuesday, according to The Hill.
“Her extensive experience in government and on the campaign trail and perspective as a White House and Washington insider is the type of analysis that sets MSNBC apart. She’s a familiar face and trusted authority to MSNBC viewers, and we look forward to her insight during this consequential election season.”
“Familiar,” maybe. No one who follows politics could miss Psaki over the past 15 months carrying the White House water in the room full of sycophantic stenographers who pass for the Washington press corps during the Biden presidency.
But “trusted” should be a bridge too far even for MSNBC.
A veteran of the Obama White House communications team, where she got to see firsthand how little interest there is in actual journalism among the liberals in the Washington media, Psaki’s brand of dissimulation fit right in with the Biden era.
Do you think Jen Psaki is going to be a hit on MSNBC?
This is a woman who’s been outrageously coddled by many of the same correspondents who spent the Trump years pretending to be tribunes of the people. She’s been cossetted by the biased mainstream media and faced few of the hard questions that were routinely hurled at her predecessors who served former President Donald Trump.
And on the rare occasions she was actually asked a difficult question — almost always by Fox News’ Peter Doocy — she stonewalled, twisted the truth or outright lied.
Whether the issue was the illegal immigration President Joe Biden has ruinously invited into the country, the supply chain issues that Psaki mocked, soaring inflation (Psaki blamed Russia), Hunter Biden’s laptop or any other topic where Americans deserved to hear the truth in the White House briefing room, Psaki could be counted on to prevaricate.
She couldn’t even tell the truth about Biden’s dog.
But to MSNBC that’s “trusted.”
Fortunately, the rest of America isn’t as gullible as the network’s viewers, and the social media response showed it. As one Twitter user put it, “she’ll be paid allot more for doing the same thing, carrying water.”
She’ll be paid allot more for doing the same thing, carrying water.
— CryptoFoLife.eth (@CryptoFoLife1) May 24, 2022
She loves to lie.
— mack (@bluegooseo6) May 24, 2022
MSNBC has nothing to do with news.
— John Nada aka Mike (@mikeboyd_eldoco) May 24, 2022
But this one really nailed it:
Given her lack of credibility as Press Secretary to Sleepy Joe, she brings the same lack to a network that has zero credibility. Zero Sum Gain.
— Mike Moore (@LCplMike) May 24, 2022
Psaki’s rampant dishonesty is no secret. Anyone who follows the news knows she has spent Biden’s tenure in office playing word games with compliant reporters to avoid admitting what so much of the informed American public already knows: The Biden presidency is an ongoing disaster.
But MSNBC is no more interested in a truly informed audience than it is in truly informing its audience.
It’s a sham of a network, shilling for liberal causes and doing it in the firm belief that its audience is gullible enough to keep going for it.
For any television network to make such obviously false claims about an incoming talking head would be an embarrassment. For a network that brands itself as covering “news,” it’s a disgrace.
But when your viewers think the routinely fraudulent Rachel Maddow is trustworthy, gullibility is something you can bank on.
