Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look at Jen Psaki’s first few months as an MSNBC host, call out a cruel and embarrassing headline from Slate, and cover more media misses.
Checking in with Jen Psaki
It’s been nearly four months since the launch of Jen Psaki’s new MSNBC Sunday morning show, Inside with Jen Psaki.
In that time, Psaki has set a Forgotten Fact Checks record: She earned a spot in the “media misses” for three consecutive weeks.
She let us know that she considers herself a journalist in April, less than one year since she was working as President Biden’s press secretary.
“Here’s how I think about it. I mean, first of all, journalism has changed dramatically,” she said. “And even when I was in the White House, working in government, it really was already all on a spectrum. It wasn’t just the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News, and then everything else wasn’t considered part of journalism, it’s all a big, broad, scope of things.”
“And so to me, journalism is providing information to the public, helping make things clearer, explaining things,” she added. “So I think there is a broad expansion of what that is.”
That expansion apparently includes airing softball interviews with your former bosses.
She invited U.S. climate czar John Kerry on her show for a fluffy conversation about Forrest Gump over ice cream. When Kerry suggested the “planet is at risk,” Psaki, who worked as Kerry’s spokesperson at the State Department during the Obama administration, quickly changed the subject to ice cream.
More recently, she conducted a similarly friendly interview with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in which the former press secretary asked thoughtful questions including what people get wrong about the progressive Squad member or what they don’t know about her:
But more than anything, Psaki fits right in with the rest of the MSNBC “journalists” because she has committed significant airtime to bashing Republicans and, this week, even led with a classic: Republicans are being compromised by a foreign entity.
Democrats famously sought to tie former president Donald Trump with Russia and also to dismiss initial reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation. Psaki herself previously likened conservative reporters to “representatives of the Russian and Chinese media asking questions directed by their government” and “propaganda pushers.”
Now, Psaki is suggesting House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, who is investigating the Biden family’s overseas business dealings, may have been “co-opted by a foreign agent”:
“How concerned are you that James Comer,” Psaki asked Representative Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) on Sunday, “was knowingly, unknowingly, working with, co-opted by a foreign agent?”
“I am just concerned that the House Oversight Committee, which has a very proud history, is suddenly being compromised in a really serious way. Our legitimacy is being eroded by the tactics adopted by Chairman Comer,” said Raskin, the ranking member of the committee.
Raskin and Representative Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) sent a letter to Comer asking for information about Biden family whistleblower Gal Luft, who has been indicted by the DOJ on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, arms trafficking, violating sanctions, and making false statements.
Comer said last week that Luft, whom he described as a “very credible witness,” had “provided incriminating evidence to six officials from the FBI and the DOJ in a meeting in Brussels in March 2019. We have no reason to believe the FBI & DOJ acted on this info.”
House Republicans “essentially have said, ‘we will validate anybody who will say anything about the Bidens,’” Raskin told Psaki.
“There are real issues that are confronting our people and [Republicans] are off on this wild goose chase related to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, and they’re main witnesses are people who are fleeing justice in America,” he added, referring to Luft.
Comer, in a statement, said that is “astonishing that Ranking Member Raskin and Rep. Dan Goldman didn’t mention that the Bidens received millions through their shell companies from the same CCP-linked company that paid Gal Luft.”
“If Democrats deem Mr. Luft as untrustworthy because he was getting money from CEFC, then why should we trust the Bidens who also received money from CEFC? Democrats have either been duped by the Bidens or they are intentionally misleading the American people. Democrats should join us in requesting the FBI’s record memorializing its interview with Gal Luft to get to the bottom of his claims about the Bidens,” he added.
On Sunday’s show, Psaki also accused Republicans of politicizing the Pentagon with their attempts to remove wokeness from the military.
The Republican-controlled House passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last week, which included amendments to prohibit the Defense Department from paying or reimbursing expenses related to abortion services and to eliminate the Pentagon’s offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion and the related personnel. Another measure would deny coverage for gender-transition surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender service members.
The Pentagon also recently implemented a policy that would ban drag shows on military installations, thwarting plans on several installations to hold drag shows to celebrate Pride Month.
Nonetheless, Psaki dismissed the idea that the U.S. military has adopted woke ideology and forced servicemembers to undergo mandatory DEI training as a “right-wing conspiracy.”
“Another right-wing conspiracy theory is that the U.S. Military is a left-wing organization, indoctrinating troops with hundreds of hours of DEI training. The actual truth? The right-wing punching bag, diversity and inclusion training, is just one hour, one hour of initial military training for infantry soldiers. And it’s during the same period of training time that they spend 160 hours on rifle marksmanship,” Psaki said.
Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, has called for legislation to push back against the woke policies in the military. He recently argued that Democrats have been turning the U.S. military “from the world’s greatest killing machine to just another outfit for liberal social engineering.”
“Republicans like Tommy Tuberville love to claim politics and wokeness is affecting the readiness of our military. But right now, the only person politicizing the military seems to be him,” Psaki said.
In other attacks against Republicans in recent months, Psaki called Republicans hypocrites because “after all their outrage and fearmongering, they are the ones who want to defund law enforcement.” Her comments came in response to calls to defund the FBI and DOJ because of the politicization of those agencies.
“So if you worry about crime and want law enforcement to be fully funded and supported, the only place you should be directing your outrage for not doing more, it turns out, is MAGA Republicans and their now-indicted leader,” she said.
And earlier this month, she accused the GOP of trying to “recruit” Muslims against transgender people.
Psaki detailed an alleged “right-wing strategy to divide minority groups” after Muslim Americans held protests at several school boards over LGBT content in school curricula.
“The GOP is trying to recruit Muslim Americans, a community that makes up less than 2 percent of the US population, against another tiny marginalized group of Americans, transgender people,” Psaki said.
Headline Fail of the Week
Progressives proclaim to be feminist defenders of women — until those women are conservative. Then apparently it’s entirely appropriate to write think pieces about their eyebrows. This week, Slate brings us a hard-hitting report: “Casey DeSantis’ Face Has Sparked an Important National Debate.”
“As the plot thickens, so do her brows,” a subheading reads.
After claiming DeSantis been given the nicknames “Tacky Onassis” and “Walmart Melania,” Slate staff writer Heather Schwedel goes on to write, “Just how thick are this lady’s brows? Have they been growing? Are Casey DeSantis’ eyebrows angling to seize new territory? Do they have . . . political ambitions? Is it possible they are bodily manifestations of her increasing influence over her husband’s presidential campaign? Should we treat them as prophets?”
Interesting that Schwedel dares to question whether the First Lady of Florida is classy while writing such an embarrassing attack on another woman’s appearance.
Media Misses