After the White House Press Corps all but ignored President Joe Biden’s obvious decline (and the few reporters who did ask questions were chastised by lackeys like Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre for doing so), the corporate media is back to criticizing President Donald Trump and demanding answers from his administration.
That is clear to anyone who has read, watched, or engaged with legacy media in the last 11 months, but Psaki – along with mainstream media alumna Katie Couric – appear to be unaware of the shift. During a recent sit-down, the former White House press secretary trotted out her talking point about how the press corps under Trump is becoming “Kremlin-esque” and full of “sycophants” – without a hint of irony.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Benny Johnson, host of The Benny Show, to discuss Psaki’s claims and the revisionist history.
The Claim
During a recent appearance on Couric’s Substack podcast, Psaki accused the Trump administration of building a “Kremlin-esque” press corps (a claim she has made before) and complained that the new media outlets covering the White House are “sycophants… who are not asking about news that the American people care about.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt caused quite a stir when she announced earlier this year that non-traditional media would be invited to the press corps and be allowed to ask questions during briefings and press conferences with her and the president. Couric described that as the Trump team bringing in “reporters from very right-wing media outlets,” and let’s just say Biden press secretary-turned-MS NOW host Psaki is not in favor of the expanded access.
“They are getting a lot of the questions. They are some of the people who are in the press pools,” she lamented. “This means that reporters who are there to cover MBS [Mohammed bin Salman] being at the White House, or to cover [Volodymyr] Zelensky being at the White House, or to ask these questions that [ABC News reporter] Mary Bruce fortunately asked yesterday, there are fewer of them.”
Psaki said that only someone with her expertise could understand the shift. “You don’t know that and see that unless you’ve lived there,” she added. “But that’s a huge, huge problem because it’s becoming more of a Kremlin-esque press corps.”
‘Living in La La Land’
It is clear that Couric and Psaki long for, as Megyn put it, “the good old days, prior to Trump, when the media was so hard on people like [Barack] Obama and Biden.” But as the montage Megyn’s producers were able to put together with minimal effort indicates, that time is but a figment of their imagination.
The trip down memory lane, which you can watch in the video above, included hard-hitting questions about Biden’s ice cream order, Obama’s confidence, Kamala Harris’ footwear, and Doug Emhoff “redefining masculinity” to name a few.
In one exchange, Psaki was asked about her boss’ workout regimen. In another, a reported inquired if the relationship between the White House and the press corps was “now at least functional in ways that wasn’t in the [first] Trump years.”
“Jen Psaki is living in la la land if she thinks that Trump is the one getting sycophant questions, as opposed to her old boss,” Megyn said. “She wants to pretend that in the good old days when she was there, it was universally tough questions for Biden and she was just super deft at handling them.”
In Johnson’s view, the montage is a reminder of why legacy media is failing. “First off, it is just terrible for the entertainment value, for the news value – none of that works as an actual product,” he said.
And then there is the fact that Psaki was in the Biden White House while there was an active cover-up to conceal the state of his health. “For Jen Psaki, of all people, to have a bloody cheek and to go on there and harp about reporters not asking tough questions or the press secretary not getting tough questions when she herself was on a level of Kremlin Soviet propaganda encouraging… Joe Biden to run again when who knows how long he has to live,” Johnson said. “How sick and dark and twisted are you people?”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Johnson by tuning in to episode 1,201 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.