White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has a habit of responding to difficult questions with sarcasm, condescension or downright snark. Earlier this week, she appeared to get so miffed by a press query that she forgot to mask up.
At the end of her Monday media briefing, Psaki was gathering up her notes to exit the White House briefing room when a reporter — as they are wont to do — shouted a parting question to her about President Joe Biden’s poll numbers.
“The president’s polling continues to collapse–” the reporter began, but Psaki quickly spoke over her.
“I know you like to shout at the end. Next time we’ll do it during the briefing,” she replied in a sarcastic, condescending tone.
Psaki then put on an artificial smile, walked off the stage, and in a voice still dripping with snark, repeated “thanks everyone,” and “thank you so much” before finally leaving the briefing room.
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Psaki often appears to work hard to convey the kind of cool and in-control demeanor that made Trump supporters such big fans of White House press secretaries Sarah Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany, who expertly thwarted the attacks of the activist media on a routine basis without batting an eye.
Yet Psaki was clearly bothered by this comment, as she left the stage without obediently remasking as she was finished speaking, as per White House guidelines.
Lately, Psaki has typically paused when she is finished with her briefing to put her mask back on, during which time it is normal for reporters to shout out last-minute questions they’re hoping she’ll answer.
Reporters, of course, remain masked during the whole of the briefings as the White House requires. The guidelines were reimposed over the summer after a brief pause in the practice before the delta variant prompted a fresh wave of COVID scares.
At the time, as The New York Times reported, Psaki said she was prepared to wear masks again, although she does not appear to be required to do so while giving briefings.
When President Donald Trump was in office, he was roundly criticized both for his treatment of the establishment media and his own failure to wear a mask in public.
The Biden administration, for which Psaki is the chief spokeswoman, promised to be the administration that was going to play by the rules and respect our nation’s free press.
And here Psaki is, throwing shade at reporters and forsaking masks that she herself has insisted are necessary to save lives.
The Democrats seem to genuinely believe that what they expect of everyone else — particularly us plebs in the American public — doesn’t apply to them.
After all, during Monday’s briefing, Psaki had been pressed on a comment that Biden made Friday while meeting with Indian Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in which he’d disparaged the American press on a hot mic and suggested the Indian media was “better behaved.”
As the New York Post reported, several reporters had taken their grievances to Psaki immediately after Biden’s Oval Office meeting with Modi, and Psaki was then grilled about the incident on Monday.
Maybe this was why she was feeling so annoyed with the press pool and distracted to the point that she forgot to dutifully swath her face before leaving the podium.
She’d already fielded a question on why Biden would suggest that the American media is worse than the Indian media when the latter nation ranks 142nd in the world for press freedoms, so perhaps a question on the president’s dropping polling numbers was just too much for her to handle.
Yes, it certainly can’t be easy being the press secretary for the disastrous Biden administration and being expected to live up to all those lofty goals it set for itself by slandering and smearing the unwashed, unmasked masses who criticize the media.
Poor Jen.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
