There’s no great secret in the fact that the current administration is different from its predecessor in almost every way. Not only is the head of the executive branch a decidedly different person in plan and personality, but those he surrounds himself with are strikingly different than the last administration’s aides.
Case in point: White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
Psaki looks like she could have walked off a panel for the New York Times or signed off on a layout at the Washington Post. She seems like the kind of person who might give you a pursed smile in the halls of Harvard or Yale if you got turned around and flagged down “someone who looks like they might know something” to get directions.
What Paski doesn’t look like, is someone who’s at her podium to actually inform with the truth. I say she doesn’t “look” like it out of the experience of hearing her press briefings. The White House communication’s officer’s “dizzying” ability to “circle back” to almost everything, while getting nowhere and giving away nothing has left many a reporter turning to their cameras and laptops with little more than an apology for their audiences.
Such was the case when Paski was questioned multiple times on Monday about the state of Georgia’s new election security law. The queries focused around the claims that President Joe Biden has repeatedly made and whether he regretted his support for Major League Baseball boycotting the state after one county said that it will lose more than $100 million in revenue.
One reporter asked Psaki, “Is the President going to change the way that he talks about the new Georgia voting law?”
“Because in that interview that you’ve referenced, he said, ‘the law would end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off,’ and he said it would end voting hours early so working people can’t have their vote after their shift is over,” the reporter continued. “But The Washington Post gave that claim four Pinocchios because that part of the law gives counties the option to extend voting hours. And so I’m just curious if the President is going to change the way that he’s talking.”
Psaki, however, managed to dodge the question which led to the reporter bringing it back up, noting that the president has been determined by law experts to be incorrect in his assertions, “So I’m just curious if he’s going to stop saying that?” the reporter pressed.
“Well, again, I think the fact-checkers will also tell you that this bill does not make it easier for people across the state of Georgia to vote, and that’s where he has concerns,” Psaki responded as she once again pushed the question aside without answer.
While it makes sense that the Biden administration would have a vastly different point of view from the previous administration, considering they are the leadership from two warring parties. However, the Trump administration press officers were, at a minimum, at least always spoiling for a fight, if reporters brought it to them.
The most disturbing thing about Psaki’s method of communication is that it may well reflect the real ethos of the Biden administration: do what you can get away with, and lie about it if there’s no way to distract voters about it.
Americans have no doubt that members of the Biden administration and his family are lying to us. The question that won’t be answered until later is how much, and about which things. In this particular case, the president has been caught in a net of double-speak that is not possible to get out of, and his press secretary is covering for him. It won’t be hard for our enemies, or our allies, to find the same disingenuous and dangerous communication an opening to work against the country, to the detriment of Americans.
