Members of presidential administrations taking roles with news networks isn’t a particularly new phenomenon. Former Bush administration press secretary Dana Perino has fostered a successful career on Fox News. Former Clinton advisor and White House communications direction George Stephanopoulos took on a prominent role as the face of ABC News.
When it comes to the Biden presidency, however, several lines have been blurred between official presidential messaging coming from the briefing room and networks who are hiring former Biden officials for prominent roles as he gears up for a re-election campaign. Networks are staffing up their ranks of former Biden communications officials at a furious pace.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki was hired by the White House from her perch as a CNN contributor and pushed the bogus fifty-one intelligence officials story on Hunter Biden’s laptop. She herself was never made to answer for that story by White House reporters. In April of 2022, it was announced that Psaki would be taking a role at MSNBC with the very people who were supposed to hold her and the White House accountable. This was almost unheard of: a sitting White House press secretary announcing a job with the media, while still in her role. She faced little pushback from future colleagues. Psaki now sits at MSNBC, where she regularly interviews former White House co-workers and Biden cabinet members, much to the dismissal of other journalists who either see a major conflict of interest and simply remain silent, or don’t. Which is worse?
Last week, CNN announced the hiring of Jamaal Simmons, fresh off his role as Vice President Kamala Harris’s communications director. Her office has yet to replace Simmons, seemingly aware that CNN is taking on that job for Harris. Only two weeks prior to the Simmons hire, CNN announced that former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfeld had been hired as an on-air commentator and contributor.
So if you’re keeping track, MSNBC has a former Biden press secretary who spends her show interviewing Biden administration officials, and now CNN has hired both former lead communications directors of that same president and vice president. This all comes as Biden himself begins to mount a re-election campaign, which will not so secretly rely heavily upon allies in the media to ignore scandals and questions of mental and physical fitness that come with an advanced age, and to keep Donald Trump and his mounting legal troubles front and center and in the living rooms, gyms and restaurants of the American people.
Rarely have we been witness to this kind of blatant corporate media campaign to back a sitting president by filling their own ranks with his former staffers, while that president refuses to sit for serious interviews or hold press conferences. Biden is attempting another basement campaign where he can sit back and let NBC, MSNBC and CNN push his messaging for him. And should they succeed in keeping Donald Trump the main focus of the election, he and they will succeed.
