Jen Psaki Says Dems ‘Undervalued’ Platforms Like Rogan As She Calls for ‘Laws To Change’ To Stop Social Media Disinfo
Screenshot via Next Question podcast
Jen Psaki called the “disinformation space” on social media platforms one of the “core issues” behind Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss to President-elect Donald Trump as she called for “laws to change” to address the issue.
Psaki joined Katie Couric on her Next Question podcast on Thursday to give a post-election analysis and both pointed to a number of issues in how the Democratic Party has sold itself to the American people. While Psaki called for major reforms to how social media platforms are held to “account,” she also argued the Democratic Party was “undervaluing” platforms like Joe Rogan’s podcast.
“One of the things that’s changed even since I got involved in politics is just the rise of the percentage of people who get their information off of platforms that have no fact checking mechanism and no accountability for having disinformation spread,” Psaki said.
The former White House press secretary under President Joe Biden recalled when she first entered politics there being an emphasis on advertising with local and nation TV outlets, as well as printed press. Now the emphasis has changed to social media and podcasts, which Psaki sees as a major issue.
“Local TV is held to a higher standard of accountability than social media platforms in terms of accurate information on their platforms. That is crazy!” she said.
Psaki added, “Laws have to change. I don’t even know the entire answer to it but that seems to me to be a core issue.”
Critics were quick to respond on social media to Psaki’s comments by pointing to a tweet in which she dismissed Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop scandal as Russian disinformation. The contents of the laptop, first published by New York Post, would go on to be confirmed by multiple media outlets. Psaki at the time was sharing a story in which dozens of former intelligence officials were dismissing the Hunter Biden story as Russian disinformation as well.
The MSNBC host moved next into Rogan’s podcast interview with Trump shortly before the election. That three hour-plus conversation has garnered more than 50 million views on YouTube. Rogan also endorsed Trump the night before the election. Rogan has repeatedly detailed his attempts to get Harris to do the podcast, but those talks never went anywhere despite Rogan agreeing to the campaign’s various conditions for the talk.
For comparison’s sake, Harris did the popular Call Her Daddy podcast — an interview that reportedly cost six figures — ahead of the election and that talk has less than one million views on YouTube. A Harris campaign advisor recently revealed there was “backlash” within the campaign to a Rogan interview from “progressive” members.
Psaki argued there was an “undervaluing” by Democrats of platforms like Rogan.
“I don’t think Joe Rogan deserves 100% credit for Donald Trump being elected, but it was a misunderstanding of kind of also how people are getting their information and an undervaluing of some of those platforms that Trump was doing that either don’t really exist on the other side or —” Psaki said before Couric jumped in.
“Not in those numbers anyway,” Couric said.
“Exactly,” Psaki said.
Watch above via Next Question.
