Jen Psaki admits MSNBC's liberal viewers expect negative coverage of Trump
MSNBC host Jen Psaki admitted on Tuesday that her network’s liberal audience expects coverage of President Donald Trump that is "typically not going to be positive" as her role expands.
Psaki is set to host MSNBC’s 9 p.m. ET program on Tuesdays through Thursdays once "The Rachel Maddow Show" returns to only airing on Mondays following President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. Psaki, a former Biden administration press secretary, said MSNBC viewers expect the network’s primetime hosts to "talk about the opposition" without being particularly friendly to Trump.
"We’re going to talk about what the opposing party is up to, in terms of Democrats, and we’re going to talk about future leaders and things. And, we’re also going to talk about Trump, and it’s typically not going to be positive," Psaki said on "The Grill Room" podcast with Dylan Byers.
"I don’t think anybody watching expects it to be positive, right? There is not like a North Star thing written on a card and everybody does it slightly differently… that’s fairly the vibe," Psaki continued. "I have not experienced this like, ‘You have to move to the center, you have to have Republicans on, you have to be more moderate.’"
Psaki said she has had Republicans on her cable news program, but she hasn’t been given any specific order to appeal to non-liberal viewers.
"Every show kind of has a North Star but the vibe is, kind of, under the same umbrella," Psaki said.
Byers asked Psaki whether MSNBC currently has a role aside from being a "scream pillow for the left," and noted that Maddow helped shape policy at the height of her powers.
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"First of all, there is only one Rachel Maddow," Psaki said, noting that Maddow has been focused on spotlighting anti-Trump protests across the nation and has refrained from projecting "fear" onto the audience despite a "scary" environment.
"People are scared at home, you have to give them some sense of what is also happening," Psaki said.
She cited Democratic National Committee (DNC) Vice Chair David Hogg as someone she could envision having an "interesting conversation" with as she explores the future of the party.
"Right now, there is no clear leader… what is clear is things shouldn’t be done how they were done in the past," Psaki said.
"So, what does that look like? I think that makes for an interesting conversation," she continued. "More interesting, in some ways, than when the party is in charge of everything."