Mercedes Schlapp Defends Jen Psaki: She ‘Did a Very Good Job’ as Biden’s Press Secretary

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp offered a magnanimous take on Jen Psaki’s effort to settle into her new role as an NBC News contributor.

Schlapp joined Dan Abrams on his NewsNation show Tuesday night as the Mediaite founder reflected on Psaki’s move from Biden White House press secretary to media pundit. Abrams led the segment by saying it was “jarring” to hear Psaki go from delivering the administration’s talking points to being brutally honest about the Democrats’ chances ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“This is not a unique situation to Jen Psaki, but it’s striking because she’s answering some of the same sorts of questions with different answers,” Abrams said. He made his point by running various clips of Psaki to display the contrast between her White House statements and her latest remarks on Meet The Press.

“I get she had a job to do for President Biden. She did it very well,” Abrams said. “It’s not fair to compare her own views with those when she represented the administration. But it also makes her analysis now feel a bit dishonest — or maybe too honest — which suggests maybe we were being deceived when she was press secretary. Either way, it’s sort of hard to watch now and say let’s just ignore everything she set up to this point as press secretary.”

Abrams then welcomed Schlapp onto the program, and he started by asking if he was being “unfair” with his analysis of Psaki’s change in tune. Schlapp appeared surprised that Abrams was being “tough” on Psaki, but she assessed that “there is always a transition” that former press secretaries go through when they switch jobs like this:

Sometimes it’s an uncomfortable transition for these former press secretaries or communications directors where they went from basically reading off the talking points that are given to you…You get obviously some of these talking points from the president and even the vice president, and then your that your job is to make sure that you’re that megaphone for the administration, and you are defending the actions of the administration over and over again in usually a hostile environment. And then, that shifts over when you become a political analyst, when you really are speaking your own opinion, what you’re seeing from the outside. You’re not in the White House bubble anymore.

Schlapp concluded her thoughts by saying Psaki is “sending a lot of warning signals to the Democrat Party” now about what could happen in November. Abrams acknowledged Schlapp’s point that Psaki isn’t the first former press secretary to display this phenomenon, though he asked if that still meant there was something “fake” that the public will perceive from Psaki.

Schlapp answered by referring to the Biden administration’s media spin efforts, particularly the recent briefing where Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to say yes or no when asked “Does Biden think America’s big cities are safe?”

“They keep spinning their way out. They keep trying to provide a very optimistic, rosy view of what’s happening in the United States, which is a huge disconnect where the American people are,” Schlapp said. “If I would be a Democrat political adviser or a communications adviser, I’d say, ‘look, come across being empathetic, connect with the American people, meet them where they are, which is right now that they are having economic struggles, that inflation is truly impacting these American families. I really think that that would be a much more successful communication strategy coming out of this White House than what we’re seeing happening right now.”

Abrams responded to that by saying “that’s what press secretaries do,” and he asked Schlapp if Trump’s press secretaries ever did the same. He concluded by saying Psaki was “great” in her job as a representative for Biden, and Schlapp also said she “did a very good job in staying calm, in presenting the talking points of the administration.”

Watch above via NewsNation.