Jen Psaki intertwines White House career with her daughter’s narrative

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki described what it was like to work for two presidential administrations while raising her daughter.

Psaki details her motherhood experience, beginning under the Obama administration, in her new book Say More, which she began promoting on MSNBC’s The Weekend. She explained she was six months pregnant when Denis McDonough offered her the job of White House Communications Director, which she ended up accepting with the advise of then-Deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton.

“I worried that mothers and women would judge me for going back and being the White House communications director. In that moment, it really took Bill Burton — who we all know — telling me this is part of your daughter’s story, too, which is true. And I think we all experience this, like part of her story is that I was the White House communications director and the press secretary, and she met the president; she’s met two presidents,” Psaki said. “But you can also value what you’re exposing them, too. That was almost like a freeing piece of advice for me at the time.”

Years later, when she served as press secretary under the Biden administration, her daughter’s kindergarten open house fell on the same day of the attack at the Kabul International Airport’s Abbey Gate. Some 13 United States’s service members and 170 Afghans died that day, which Psaki described as the “worst day” during her tenure with President Joe Biden.

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“But it’s just a moment that for me kind of exemplifies this tricky, tricky balance — again not the right word — but thing that so many parents go through as they’re trying to be present in so many aspects of their [children’s] lives,” Psaki said.

Psaki left the White House in 2022 to host her own weekly program on MSNBC, Inside with Jen Psaki.