NEW YORK (AP) — Jen Psaki is stepping up — not to a podium, but to MSNBC's flagship time slot.
Former President Joe Biden's first White House press secretary, who began hosting her Sunday show “Inside” in 2023 for the network, will move regularly to prime-time starting on May 6.
She'll take over Rachel Maddow's 9 p.m. Eastern weekday hour on Tuesday through Friday when Maddow resumes her one-night-a-week schedule on Mondays. Maddow has been hosting five nights a week for the beginning of the second Trump administration.
Psaki replaces Alex Wagner, who had the daunting task of trying to hold onto as many viewers of MSNBC's most popular personality as she could. Psaki's selection was one of the early moves for new MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler, who is also navigating MSNBC's corporate divorce from NBC News.
With the new schedule comes a new name for Psaki's program, “The Briefing.” Her Sunday show will end.
Psaki talked with The Associated Press about her new role, and a little about her past in the White House, at an admittedly hard time for MSNBC's predominantly liberal viewers. “Part of my job," she said, “is to tell stories of hope.”
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ASSOCIATED PRESS: For people who have followed your work at MSNBC, should they expect much different from the new show?
PSAKI: We're changing the name, so there's that difference ... There are things that we will continue to do — like big newsmakers and conversations about policy, what it means for people sitting at home, hopefully some surprising guests sometimes, the future of the Democratic Party ... One of the reasons we wanted to change the name, or I wanted to change the name, is that it feels like a moment post-election and the months since we're all reflecting on the notion that people on the inside or insiders have all the answers is incorrect. I didn't want to send the message to viewers that that was our assumption. The second is I think right now in this moment, as the federal government is being dismantled and the rule of law is being threatened, people's rights are being threatened, there's a huge appetite for information and understanding of what the heck is happening.
AP: Does going into a time slot identified with Rachel for so many years affect how you put together your show? Do you have to be cognizant of her audience?
PSAKI: There's only one Rachel Maddow. She's built, obviously, an incredible connection with the people who have watched for 17 years. Even if I trained at the Rachel Maddow anchor school — which doesn't exist, that I'm aware of — for five years, I could never do what she does how she does it. What I'm taking with me and what I'm trying to apply are a lot of the lessons I've learned from her over the past couple of years, one of them being that she works her tail off. She never rests on the laurels of the success she's had over the course of time. She's pretty fearless about saying what she thinks, and she tells stories that not everybody does. Those things kind of stick with me. We have very different backgrounds. I spent two decades working for two presidents and a secretary of state and have been on more campaign buses that I could ever recall or list for you. Obviously our show is based in Washington, D.C., which is a difference, too. Every day I'm going to lean into that experience and background to help provide clarity for people who are watching.
AP: You've had time to see Karoline Leavitt in your old role (White House press secretary). How do you think she's doing?
PSAKI: If the job were just about being able to command a room and speak on behalf of the president you're working for, then she would have higher marks in my view than many of her predecessors. I think the challenge, though, is that that's not the totality of your job. The job is also about sharing up-to-date, accurate information and taking tough questions. And when you're selecting who's in the briefing room, who is in the Oval Office, kicking out, frankly, wire reporters who are there to tell the story of exactly what is happening, and when you're echoing at times what I would consider to be Kremlin talking points, I'm not sure you're doing justice to what the job is intended to be and what many of her predecessors — Democrats and Republicans — have done.
AP: She makes the point that there needs to be change in how the press room is constituted and operates. Do you think it's inappropriate that she's trying to determine who is in position to question the president, or is that part of her job?
PSAKI: You always have to modernize what that job is doing and that's important, and I think any of her predecessors including me would agree with that. Sean Spicer, you can criticize him all you want, but he did bring in a video screen and include regional reporters in the (briefing) room at times. I think there are interesting things that can be done and I'm a full supporter of that, including the different outlets that have access to the briefing room and the president. But there's a difference between doing that and kicking out people who have institutional knowledge, who have a historic, decades-long record of telling accurate, up-to-date stories to the public for good or bad about about the president, whoever the president may be, kicking them out and replacing them with people who are clearly biased to the person you're working for. And you can tell by the kind of questions that are being asked.
AP: There's a feeling among some people that President Biden's people hid the effects of his age from the public. Do you think that's fair and what would you say to people who suggest you played a role in doing that, too?
PSAKI: I left three years ago, in May of 2022. I never saw publicly, obviously, or privately the person that people saw on the debate stage that night in June less than a year ago. I've only seen him once since then. In my time working for him he was, yes, a man who was over 80 years old. It wasn't a secret. His age was not a secret, including to the millions of people who voted for him. But also a person who, when I worked for him, who could move quickly from engaging in a conversation about a political race to calling a European leader to having a three-hour meeting about COVID and the COVID response. So that was my experience working for him. Aging can happen quickly. I'm not a doctor or an expert on that, but all I can speak to is what my interactions were with him.
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
David Bauder, The Associated Press
