Jen Psaki’s show on MSNBC debuted on Sunday.
Was it groundbreaking? Not really. Was it different? A tad. But was it solid? Sure.
“Inside with Jen Psaki” looked and sounded, for the most part, like the kind of show you would expect to see and hear on a Sunday morning cable news network. The former Biden White House press secretary had Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and New York City Mayor Eric Adams among her guests.
But there was a bit of a twist, and the show should get credit for at least trying. Psaki’s interview with Adams took place on the subway and at his home. It was the first of what the show is calling “Weekend Routine,” where Psaki interviews subjects in less formal settings.
At least it’s something different.
As far as the guests, Psaki asked Whitmer if she would ever run for president. Whitmer said, “I don’t know what the future looks like. When I left the legislature, I thought I was never going to run for office again, and here I am in my fifth year as governor of the state. I know enough about myself that if I see a problem that’s not getting fixed and I think I can do something about it, I’m going to roll my sleeves and try.”
Meanwhile, Psaki closed her first show by saying, “This isn’t just work for me. I care about what’s happening in the world because I am a mom, and I care about the country my two amazing kids will grow up in. I worry about the active shooter drills that all of our kids now experience as a regular part of childhood. I worry about social media and the impact it is having on an entire generation struggling with their mental health. And I worry about the continued crackdowns on people’s rights, from what you read, to who you love, to the choices you make about your own body.”
She added, “Disagreement is a healthy part of our democracy. From my 20 years in politics I learned one lesson: Outrage alone doesn’t win elections. People who are informed and engaged are the engine of our democracy. We are going to focus on the search for solutions to the biggest issues the country is facing. More than anything I hope this show is a place each week where you’ll learn something — about an issue you care about or about a person you want to know more about.”
It’s never fair to come to conclusions after one show, but overall, it was a good debut for Psaki. The “Weekend Routine” was intriguing, and Psaki has said she hopes to occasionally venture outside of politics for guests. You would also expect Psaki to become even more comfortable in this new setting. In the end, anything that from time to time steps away from the typical Sunday morning format is worth a watch.
Oh, one more thing about Psaki’s opening show …
Earlier in the show, Psaki addressed what seems like the favorite talking point for many conservatives these days: wokeism.
She said, “For Republicans, ‘wokeness’ is public enemy No. 1. By the sound of it, there is simply no greater threat to American liberty. Whether or not they actually believe it, they clearly think it’s a winning message ahead of 2024. And it makes you think, are they onto something? Should I be freaking out about how right-wing Republicans are co-opting ‘woke’ and ‘wokeism?’ My gut here is no. You don’t need to be too worried about their war on ‘woke.’ Because the Republican crusade against ‘wokeness’ may not be as potent of a campaign issue as they hope. And here’s why: Most people don’t think of the term ‘woke’ in the way that Republicans would like them to. It’s simply not the boogeyman they’d have you believe.”
Psaki pointed to a recent USA Today poll that found 56% of Americans think of “woke” as meaning “being informed, educated, and aware of social injustices” as opposed to “being overly politically correct.”
Speaking of woke …
Bethany Mandel is the conservative writer who predicted her own viral moment last week when she struggled to define the word “woke” even though that word is part of the central premise of her book, “Stolen Youth.”
Mandel was doing an interview for “Rising” — an online program from The Hill — when she stumbled and stammered to define a word that she uses all the time. (I wrote about this in a newsletter last week.)
Newsweek, to the criticism of social media, extended a hand to help Mandel climb out of her hole. It turned over its “My Turn” column to allow her to give her explanation as to what happened.
Mandel partly blamed the host for saying something she took as negative about parents just before the interview began. Mandel wrote about the struggles of being a mother of six children and striking a work-life balance. And she said she had a panic attack on air and broke down after the interview.
It read like a bunch of feel-bad-for-me excuses. While one can be sympathetic to anyone — especially a tired parent — for having a bad day, it’s important to remember how Mandel has weaponized and profited off of the word “woke.” Seems like she’s the one to blame for being unable to answer a completely legitimate question.
The word was a topic of discussion on CNN’s “Inside Politics” as host Abby Phillip asked the question that seems to be at the center of all this: “If it’s so hard to define, does it just kind of come to mean whatever anybody wants it to mean?”
“Inside Politics” guest Ramesh Ponnuru said, “Well, that’s the nature of a lot of political terms. … All of these things are sort of fuzzy concepts and different people are going to give you different definitions of it. I do think that we should try to be as precise as possible when we’re arguing about a specific thing, to talk about that specific thing and not go straight to this abstract term.”
Trump’s arrest imminent?
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg participates in a news conference in New York last month. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
This could be a dicey week.
Reports are that former President Donald Trump could be arrested by law enforcement in New York this week after a yearslong investigation into a hush-money scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump, himself, is among those reporting he could be arrested, posting on his Truth Social. He also used social media to write, “PROTEST, TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK.”
That raised fears of Trump suggesting another attack similar to what we saw on Jan. 6 when his supporters stormed the Capitol.
Now, to be clear, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has not commented. The New York Times has reported that “a Manhattan grand jury indictment (is) likely but its timing unclear.” And then a Trump spokesperson later said Trump had no direct knowledge of the potential timing of a possible arrest.
But the story made the rounds on the Sunday morning news shows.
CBS News’ Robert Costa said on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” that he has talked to the Trump legal team, which expects the legal strategy to be “combative.”
“But there’s a lot of debate in the inner circle about how combative to be, including the use of the word ‘protest’ in the former president’s social media language over the weekend,” Costa told moderator Margaret Brennan. “There is some consternation among some allies privately (that) maybe that’s a bit too far. But they do want to see solidarity with his supporters.”
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly said, “I think it’s very important for the Manhattan DA to look into this thoroughly. … I would hope that, if they brought charges, that they have a strong case, because this is — as you said, it’s unprecedented. And there are certainly risks involved here. But, again, nobody in our nation is or should be above the law.”
But, as Brennan and others have described, this is “unprecedented” territory with a former president perhaps being indicted. Costa said that, as of Sunday morning, there had not been any coordination between the Trump camp and the Manhattan district attorney. Would Trump be handcuffed? Would there be a so-called “perp walk” in front of cameras? Would this all be done privately?
“What we do know,” Costa said, “is that the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has informed his own colleagues that he will do everything he can to keep them safe knowing that the former president has called for protests. There’s a lot of unease inside the Manhattan DA’s office at this time. Whenever there is an indictment, should it come, it would be coordinated by NYPD and Secret Service and other local authorities.”
In fact, Politico’s Erica Orden reported that, in a letter to staff regarding the threats of protests, Bragg wrote, “We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”
How did we get here? Here’s the best account of everything in this superb story by Michael Rothfeld, the New York Times investigative reporter on the metro desk: “Inside the Payoff to a Porn Star That Could Lead to Trump’s Indictment.”
Making a change
A.O. Scott, the well-regarded film critic of The New York Times since 2000, announced he is leaving that job. He will move to the Book Review as a critic at large.
In a column announcing his move, Scott wrote about how many movies he watches (about 100 a year); whether he loves movies (“I’ve often been infatuated by movies, but I’ve also frequently been frustrated, confused and enraged by them”); and he describes which movies he decides to review.
He also talked about his favorite all-time movie (Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita”), which reviews he got wrong and how movies have changed, particularly with how COVID-19 impacted theater-going and streaming.
The entire piece is interesting, but I found one passage to be the most interesting of all.
Scott wrote, “But I’m not a fan of modern fandom. This isn’t only because I’ve been swarmed on Twitter by angry devotees of Marvel and DC and (more recently) ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once.’ It’s more that the behavior of these social media hordes represents an anti-democratic, anti-intellectual mind-set that is harmful to the cause of art and antithetical to the spirit of movies. Fan culture is rooted in conformity, obedience, group identity and mob behavior, and its rise mirrors and models the spread of intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies in our politics and our communal life.”
Media tidbits
- The New York Times’ Elizabeth Williamson and Emily Steel with “Sandy Hook Families Are Fighting Alex Jones and the Bankruptcy System Itself.”
- For The Washington Post, Katherine Ellison with “NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks about living with hearing loss.” Kelly told Ellison, “For many years I felt like everyone mumbled all the time. I couldn’t hear the words to songs. But I routinely passed the hearing checks. … Then one day I was doing a book tour for my first book and I couldn’t hear the questions from the audience. Shortly afterwards, I scheduled a full audiologist work-up. In one test, I had to repeat words spoken to me. When I couldn’t see the doctor’s lips moving, it turned out I was missing 70% of what was said. That was 10 years ago. I got my hearing aids shortly afterwards.”
- For “CBS Sunday Morning,” here are the latest book recommendations from Washington Post book critic Ron Charles.
- Less than a week away now from the start of season four — and the final season — of HBO’s “Succession.” To get you ready, The Los Angeles Times’ Meredith Blake profiles one of the show’s stars in “Sarah Snook wasn’t sold on ‘Succession’ at first. Now, she feels a ‘sense of loss.’”
- Over the weekend in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, UCLA’s David Singleton badly turned his ankle. Turner Sports analyst Brendan Haywood said to his producers on the air, “Oh my goodness … Please don’t show that again. Please do not show that again!” So what did producers do? They showed it again. The Big Lead’s Stephen Douglas has more.
- Stupendous work in The Washington Post as photojournalist Salwan Georges returns to Iraq for the first time since 1998 in “The Iraq I Never Knew.”
Hot type
- For The New York Times, Eli Saslow (with photographs by Todd Heisler) with “A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis.”
- Taylor Swift has kicked off her much-anticipated Eras Tour and The Washington Post’s Emily Yahr went to Glendale, Arizona, to write about it. And for the Swifties, The Ringer’s Nora Princiotti ranks Swift’s all-time great live performances.
More resources for journalists
- Hiring? Post jobs on The Media Job Board — Powered by Poynter, Editor & Publisher and America’s Newspapers.
- Poynter’s Beat Academy (March-Oct.) (Webinar series) — Enroll now.
- Telling the Stories of Faith and the Faithful — Los Angeles, April 18 (Seminar) — Register by March 28.
- Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative — (Sept. – April, 2024) (Hybrid) — Apply by May 15.
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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