White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki Explains Why Biden Administration Engages With Fox News

By A.J. Katz 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was recently interviewed by Snapchat’s Good Luck America host (and former CNN newser) Peter Hamby. The interview touched on multiple topics, including the administration’s relationship with Fox News.

Hamby: I feel like at the end of the Obama administration, the point of view in the communications team was that “there’s no point in talking to Fox.” And other Democrats kind of adopted that viewpoint — that they’re only going to lash Democrats, we don’t need to deal with them. Why should a Democrat engage with Fox News? What’s the point?

Psaki: Well, we don’t do a lot of the personalities on Fox. Look, I would say that the president’s No. 1 goal still is beating the pandemic. Our objective is to put people back to work, and we need to talk to Fox and Fox viewers in order to do that. Now, they are not waiting for the president, the vice president, me, other people from the administration to tell them what to do, but they might listen to medical experts or some of our doctors. They might. There might be information that strikes them because it’s so fact-based that if we convey it to Fox, that they may hear that.

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I think our view at this moment is we don’t have to approve—we don’t—of everything they do, editorially; of everything their personalities say or do, but it is still a platform for us to communicate with the public.

And frankly, the other piece of it is getting in a fight with Fox News at this point in time for the administration isn’t particularly constructive; coming off of an administration that completely destroyed trust in media, trust in institutions. That’s not the fight we want to fight right now. We want to fight a fight about getting the pandemic under control, and things that actually impact people’s lives.

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