White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says that calling her “nice” is “sexist and a little diminishing.”
In a fawning piece from Vogue headlined “Press Secretary Jen Psaki is Good At Mending Fences. Just Don’t Call Her Nice,” Psaki explained to the brown-nosing reporter that she “hates” when people say she is nice because “it is like nails on a chalkboard.”
“And it still happens. I was introduced to a foreign delegation in the hallway the other day as ‘This is Jen. You may have seen her do the briefings. She’s a really nice person.’ I’m like, Really? You can’t think of a better description?'” Psaki asked.
Despite Psaki’s whining about people calling her nice, she still often invokes the use of the word in the White House press briefing room where she tells reporters “nice to meet you.”
She also framed “nice” in a positive light when referring to a piece about respect and civility ahead of the Iowa caucuses.
Opinion piece in @DMRegister is everything you want nice Iowa to be…but it feels@like it may get a little testy at these caucuses pic.twitter.com/RuhWUpZ4Fs
— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) February 2, 2020
In January, Psaki appeared to take no issue with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow who scolded the press secretary and the Biden administration for “being too nice about what Republicans are likely to do” about the COVID spending bill.
While Psaki seems averse to what she labels as sexism now, she admitted in February to delaying action against Former White House Deputy Press Secretary T.J. Ducklo who slung derogatory comments towards Politico’s Tara Palmeri and was later forced to resign. The comments included threatening to “destroy” her if the corporate media outlet chose to run a story on the potential conflicts of interest stemming from Ducklo’s relationship with Axios reporter Alexi McCammond and claiming Palmeri was just “jealous” of “an unidentified man in the past who had ‘wanted to f-ck’ McCammond ‘and not you.’”
Biden previously warned his staff that he would fire them “on the spot” if he heard them “disrespect or talk down to someone.” Psaki, however, claimed Ducklo was not technically fired because “it was not about an issue related to the White House or a White House policy or anything along those lines.”