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Jen Psaki
White House Press Secretary
Jen Psaki was President Biden’s White House press secretary from January 2021 to May 2022. Previously, she served as a senior communications advisor during the Obama administration. She now hosts the talk-show Inside with Jen Psaki on MSNBC.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on May 3, 2024, prior to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Biden’s First Days in Office
Can you help me understand what it was like walking into the White House with President [Joe] Biden in that moment when you did, in the midst of COVID, right after Jan. 6, just arriving at the White House?Help me understand what that was like
Sure. Well, the first thing people need to know is we had to meet, for those of us who were not going to the inauguration—I didn't go to the inauguration because I was doing a briefing that day, which was the first time that a press secretary has done it the first day, as far as I know—and so those of us who were not going to the inauguration met at the National Zoo, and we boarded buses to go downtown because of all of the security precautions in the perimeter around the White House and downtown, because it was just a couple of weeks after Jan. 6.So we all had double masks on, and we drove through downtown D.C. on these buses to go to the White House.So I was not with the president when he walked into the building the first time.
But when I walked in, we had to meet.We had to be dropped off a couple of blocks from the White House and walk—walk a couple of blocks to the White House.And when I walked in, I remember [Senior Adviser to the President] Cedric Richmond turning to me and saying, “Does anyone tell us where to go, or do we just kind of get an office number and show up at our office?”And I said, “I think it's the latter, my friend.That's what we do.”But there were not many of us on the first day, especially arriving at noon on Inauguration Day.
And the first time that you see the president in the Oval Office—I mean, people say that's a job that you don't understand until you're there—what was he like?
Well, yeah, I think what's a little different for him, and he and I spoke about this in the first couple of weeks, is that he had been there before as the vice president, and so he was quite familiar with the setup of the Oval Office and the setup of the West Wing.He’d worked there for eight years, so for him, there was a familiarity that most people who are in that job don't have.
The first time I saw him in the Oval Office, I went in with a group of other senior advisers maybe an hour before my first briefing, so it was probably late in the afternoon/early evening.And we sat down on the couches in there, and I was there to ask him or to tell him what I was going to convey at the first briefing, and also ask him if there were any impressions from the inauguration.What did he take in standing up there?Of course, also during a moment of great turmoil in our country.And we talked about that.
But I also asked him if he had seen the letter, if he had found the letter that President [Donald] Trump, former President Trump had left him.And he said, “He left me a letter?”And I said, “I think so.I don't know.There's a tradition, but you never know.”So he shuffled around the desk, and he did find the letter, which was very long.And I couldn't see.I was sitting on the couch, but long, scripted, multiple pages.He read it quietly, and then we discussed how I would describe it at the briefing.So that was the first time I spent time with him in the Oval Office.
That letter is so interesting.And you never find out what was in that letter?
I did not.I mean, President Biden is way too classy for that.He didn't let any of us read it.I don't know if he's let anyone read it since then.Maybe his wife. Who knows?But he wanted to describe it as gracious and generous, and we all thought describing it as generous is a little bit of a bridge too far given who we're talking about here, who had just prompted an insurrection two weeks before, so we described it as gracious at the briefing that day.
Did that insurrection—and Trump was claiming that Biden didn't win the election, that he wasn't a legitimate president—and attempts to overturn the election on Jan. 6, did that shape Biden as he comes in and who he is as president?
Of course.I mean, but so did COVID.These were all happening at the same time.And I think the insurrection and the fact that the country, but really also Washington, D.C., where we were all living, was still reeling from it—I mean, still is today—that also shaped who he was and who he wanted us all to be in the first several months or even year of his presidency.Now he obviously ran against Donald Trump pretty aggressively.He attacked him aggressively, he called him out aggressively, but he also—and this is obviously through the prism of my experience—but wanted to make sure we were playing a role in kind of healing the country, if we could.The country—people were dying of COVID, one thousand people a day, when he was inaugurated, and he didn't want me to go out to the briefing every day and go attack Republicans or attack Trump.We talked about Trump very little.We tried to avoid it.We didn't even weigh in on impeachment proceedings which were going on when President Biden was inaugurated as well, in part because he wanted to do everything he could to try to be president for the entire country and not continue the political campaign, because he felt it had already been—it was already clearly a very divisive time.
One of the interesting things, because we're doing a biography over his whole career, and the president is known as being loquacious and talking a lot and sometimes being gaffe-prone.And then he comes into this position where he's in the White House, and as you know, a lot of people say he's more buttoned down, and there's attempts to control him.Was it a hard adjustment?You're there in those first days of—how is he going to relate?How often is he going to talk?Was it a hard adjustment for him?
In some ways.I mean, look, I think there are aspects of that that are true in the sense that in the time I was there, so about the first year and a half, he almost always answered questions from the press when they were yelling them at him, even when it wasn't necessarily advantageous to do that.At the same time, I think when there's this theory or this view that he is not disciplined is wrong.He was the one who was driving the approach to being very 10,000-foot, a unifier.That's what he wanted us to be.That's what he wanted me to try to do from the briefing, right, to try to take some of the venom out of the briefing room.That was driven by him.
So I think there's always an adjustment to being president.Of course there is.I have no idea personally, nor will I ever exactly know, but I was there for two different presidents coming in.But I think he had a gut instinct about what the country needed and sort of what message and what feeling they needed to hear from, not just him, but from the people who worked for him.
Does he get frustrated when he does something like, let's say the two-hour press conference, and there's one thing that he says about a minor incursion or something, and it overshadows a moment like that?How does he personally react?Does he get frustrated at the press, at himself?
Of course, because he's human.I don't think there's any president in American history who has not been frustrated at the press sometimes.You know, the two-hour press conference—and I was there for that, and my theory there is that he decided he wanted to prove to the press and the public that he could do a two-hour press conference.He'd done many press conferences before.He knew when it was about an hour because we gave him enough people to call on to make it about an hour.But he had something to prove, whether it was conscious or unconscious.
But he's also been speaking in public for many decades.He certainly understands and knows, if there's one thing you say that's not as articulate as you would like, that that's what's going to be picked up, and that's only been magnified, obviously, since the rise of social media.So he's not naive to that, but is it frustrating?Of course it is, because he's human.
The Withdrawal from Afghanistan
How important was the withdrawal [from] Afghanistan to President Biden?Did he see it in personal terms because of Beau's service?How did he talk about it?
No, I don't think that's the right assessment of it.He had long been someone who, as the former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, believed we were in Afghanistan under the wrong guise and that we had spent way too much money there; there had been far too many people who had died there.Obviously his son had served, so he had pride, still has pride in that, but it was more about the fact that the war, in his view, had gone on too long, and he’d long had that view, back to when he was vice president.
He also inherited a situation where he was set up for a no-win situation with the Taliban because of what Donald Trump had left him.So it was more about what he believed was a war that nobody had had the courage to get out of, and he felt it was long past time.
Can you help me understand that moment, where it becomes clear—I think you're on vacation or at the beach when it becomes clear that things are not going well, and Kabul is falling, and what the reaction is in the White House, and your part?
Well, I think that's not exactly the right assessment of it.It was obviously a multiple-month withdrawal from Afghanistan, so it wasn't like a one-day thing.Over the course of months, there were many moments where there were decisions that had to be made to keep a troop presence there longer in order to get more Afghans out.It was a push-and-pull because of that, because once you took the presence entirely out, it would be much harder to get SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants out.1And actually, the people who were the diplomats on the ground wanted to stay there till the very last moment possible.That was the push-and-pull that was going on.
1
U.S. Department of State: Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans - Who Were Employed by/on Behalf of the U.S. Government
It was August, mid-August.I had not had a day off for the entire time I had started.I was planning to go away with my family.I put an “Out of Office” in—this is more a story about the reaction from a political front, because I put an “Out of Office” in my email to be responsible to reporters, members of the Republican Party suggested that I was irresponsibly leaving people behind in Afghanistan.I, of course, am a spokesperson.I was not responsible for the withdrawal of Afghanistan.That was my personal—I came back after a day, and I came back because [then-White House Chief of Staff] Ron Klain asked me to come back and do the briefings, because it was clear we needed to continue doing those, even though typically you don't do them when the president is off.
I think that period of time was incredibly difficult for a range of reasons.We knew internally that it was going to be a very rocky period, because ending a war is not easy.The decision is not easy either.And the consequences of that were never going to be easy.The worst day that I was in the White House was the day that 14 soldiers died, of course.That was the worst day.I bet it was probably still, to date, the worst day that President Biden also experienced, because losing men and women who served for you, there's nothing worse.
And so that day was a day that was full of anguish for everyone.But it was many, many months of daily sitting on the edge, worried about terrorist threats, worried about men and women serving there, worried about how we were going to get more SIV applicants out, worried about how Afghans who came to the United States would be accepted or not here when they came.
And you were in the Situation Room when that news came down?
I was.It was—I had come in, and there had been concern among the national security team that there wasn't an understanding that there were real terrorist threats on the ground, and it was something that we were trying to, in a totally appropriate, aboveboard way, meaning not revealing any classified information, inform the press about, that there were real terrorist threats around Abbey Gate and during the withdrawal.
And I came in, and I gave an update to [Deputy National Security Adviser] Jon Finer, and I said, “I think we're making a little progress in helping people understand the threat.”And he said, “There’s been an attack.”And we were there for the course of a couple of hours when there were updates coming in about the severity of the attack and how many lives were lost.And in that moment, I also knew that it was something the president was of course going to need to address, the country needed to hear from him, and it was thinking about what he could say.He would have a gut instinct about what to say.
It was also, on a personal note, the day of my daughter's kindergarten open house, so I had to figure that out as well.But we knew, in that moment, the president had to address it, and he did later that evening, and then I did a briefing after him.
Can you help me understand the trip to meet the bodies and the families?I know you talked to the president afterwards.Can you help me just understand those moments and really how it affected him?And did it change him?
Sure.I wasn't with him when he made that trip.I did speak to him afterwards, because afterwards, some of the parents—well, there was a story that was inaccurate and erroneous, which later was fact-checked, that suggested he was like, looking at his watch for an extended period of time, which, after the fact-check, it became clear he had just looked at his watch after everybody had left.2
And, you know, I think that was probably, at least in the time I worked for him, the most solemn and the hardest period of his presidency, because having lost someone himself, obviously under very different circumstances, he does feel a connection, a deep connection to people who have lost loved ones, lost their children.That is typically what he conveys to people when he's talking to them about when they've lost someone.
That was not well received by some of the people who had lost their child.That's fair.You can feel however you're going to feel, which is what his feeling was as well at the time.But what was heartbreaking is that they felt he was being self-involved by sharing his own story.That was what some of these parents shared.Now, what is also true is that some of them were ardent Trump supporters.They had also lost their loved one.So you can't attribute necessarily, but that was kind of a factor in some of these scenarios.
So I spoke with him about this when the New York Times was doing a big story about the reaction of these family members, and I had to call him and convey to him, “This is what they're going to say and what they're going to write, and I'm so sorry that you are—that this is the news I'm delivering to you.”And his response was, “I thought I was helping them.”That's really where it genuinely came from.And for someone who's lost as much as he has, to have the reaction that it wasn't helping them, I think, is especially heart-wrenching.
So did it change him?I'm not sure if it changed him.I just think any moment like that, especially when you're the commander in chief and nothing that's easy comes to your desk, sticks with you, I'm sure.
Yeah. It certainly must be a moment where you realize, he had been vice president, he had been in the Senate, but now he's the commander in chief, and he's the one making those decisions.
Sure.Nothing easy comes to your desk, nothing.
Constant Challenges at the White House
In that year, you're dealing with the withdrawal; you're dealing with unexpected COVID variants and supply chain and inflation.And if you look at the polls, you see things starting to change.How does it feel during that period in the White House?Do you feel like you're constantly under fire from events?
Yes, but that's how it always feels in the White House.I mean, I worked for President Obama for eight years, so that's almost always how it feels.Now, this period of time, as you alluded to, was unique in that we had our—there was an insurrection at our nation’s Capitol.There was a life—generational pandemic.We were dealing with not a recession, but certainly an economic downturn.Prices were going up.So there was just a slew of news and challenging stories.
I think all you can do, when you're in the White House in those moments, is figure out how you can chip away the next day, right, how you can try to make progress in communicating and getting something done and getting a deal.Now, in the first year also, we also got the infrastructure deal done.We also made progress on getting a huge climate deal.There were moments of joy.We got [Supreme Court Associate Justice] Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed early in the second year, so there were also moments of joy and elation, and you kind of live for those when you're navigating through explaining the supply chain every day.
As you know, there's this question of like, why don't those things that you just mentioned stick in the sense of poll numbers, in the sense of people talking about him?From your perspective, because the administration could say—and even after you're done, right, there's the Inflation Reduction Act; there's a lot of legislation that the president points to.Is it frustrating?What was the dynamic from the White House's perspective of you think that you're achieving all these things, but does it feel hard to break through?
Of course it's hard to break through, in part because—well, there's a range of reasons.One of them is that Joe Biden's predecessor became a four-times-indicted former president who is running, again, for—running again against him, right?And that is a storyline, and people have a range of views about this, but it blocks out the sun of other things.It is a historic moment, good or bad, whatever you feel about it.And I mean, I don't feel good about it, but some people might.I don't know.So that's a reality.
There's also a reality of the changing media environment and the way people consume information.And this is something that certainly the White Houses I've worked in, you have to adapt to that.And there isn't a perfect adaptation to it.That's why I think it's very smart when the president does things like interview with Howard Stern, which actually breaks through the noise.You have to be very selective about the types of things you do, because it's not like the era of the Bush or Clinton presidencies, or certainly Reagan, where there was like a couple of print outlets and a couple of television stations, and if you got them to do a story, that was it.It's no longer what the media environment or the ecosystem is or processes.And you know that in the White House.It's frustrating, but you can't change it on your own, so you have to figure out how to work within the system, or outside the system, to break through to the people you're trying to reach.
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Was there a moment that you realized, or the president realized, that Putin was going to invade Ukraine and that this was really going to happen?And what was his reaction and his demeanor in that moment?
Well, I think what was interesting about that moment, so this is back to early winter of 2022, I don't know if it was one moment—it was several weeks, right, back to even the fall, probably, probably—is intelligence was suggesting this was very much their plans, and intelligence that we were sharing with the Europeans and others.There was a decision made by the administration, which I participated in, although I wasn't the decision-maker in it, which I very much supported, because it was counter to what was done when I worked for Obama, which was to declassify and proactively share that information, to basically say, “Putin is going to invade.” ...
And the way he saw it, it’s really interesting the language that he uses around it and comparing it to Charlottesville, [Virginia,] and talking about democracy.And Joe Biden wasn't necessarily known as someone for that kind of language before, certainly not before he ran in 2020.But why did he phrase it—was that an intentional decision to frame the war in these big, epic terms, that it's not just an invasion; it's something bigger?
Well, before the war, he'd obviously given a number of speeches on democracy versus autocracy.That was a theme he saw not just overseas but in the United States.And it's something he's talked about quite a bit.Now, Charlottesville was one of the reasons he ran for president.I wasn't working for him at the time, but he's obviously talked about that extensively, and I think that that was a shifting moment for a lot of people, including him, of course.
But the democracy-versus-autocracy theme is something that I think even predated that for him, given all of the time he spent working on foreign policy issues and as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.So to him, of course the language is purposeful, and the point he's making is that this is a threat to our democracy.You have to make the argument.Foreign policy is not front and center for the public in the United States, typically.It was surprisingly front and center for the public for months around Ukraine.I mean, there was wall-to-wall coverage of it.And there wouldn't be unless people wanted to consume it.
I remember, my mother-in-law was like giving me updates on military movements.I was thinking, how do you know all of this?But for the president—and this is still the case—it's imperative to convey to the public and make the argument to the public why they should care.And part of the argument is, this is a threat to the sovereignty of another country.This is a threat to the democratically elected government of Ukraine, to these people who are Ukrainian citizens.This other country is trying to take their land.We don't want that to happen because that's not what we stand for in the United States.So it's connecting the argument to kind of who we are in our ideals.
Biden’s Focus on Democracy
He also gives a speech on Jan. 6 that's also about democracy.Am I reading too much into it, that his presidency looks like it's focused initially on dealing with lots of individual problems, and that in that second year, there is this bigger theme from the campaign that he's sort of turning to, of democracy?
Oh, it's an interesting way of looking at it.I think the first year was, we had no idea what we were inheriting.I mean we had a transition with Trump and the Trump team.It was not a normal transition for all the reasons we know, including the insurrection and their refusal to cooperate with us.So the president and Cabinet members and others didn't really know what we were walking into.And we were still—we knew we were walking into a pandemic, an economy that was reeling.So there was a crisis management aspect, certainly, of the first year.
It's still how he felt about the democracy versus autocracy.That still was in his soul, but it felt imperative to kind of deal with the crisis at hand, right?And so I think the themes came back.And some of those themes, like when he gave that Jan. 6 speech in Georgia, if I remember correctly, that was really a moment where it was like, “Oh, he's using language that's a little harsher about the opposition.”That was purposeful, in not overusing—not overly attacking members of another party, in part because there were legislative things that he was trying to get done, including the COVID relief package, including the infrastructure bill, and he knew that he needed to kind of leave people a bridge to come back, if that makes sense, to support these things, but also because he felt that when you come in as president, especially at the moment he did, he needed to be a healer more than he needed to be an attacker in that moment.Even though he can very much—he's a politician in his heart.He can—he very much has the attack dog in him, but he felt that's what was needed in the first year.
Hunter Biden
During that period, Republicans are focusing on his son, on Hunter and his problems.And obviously, the president is a loving father.You can hear it, because of the things that were released, his concern for him.What is the approach that he wants you to take, that he takes, in a moment like that?
The approach really was Hunter is his son.He is not a public figure.He's not in elected office.He doesn't work in the White House.We were very specific, and we got approved by him, personally, whatever we said, because his family is his family, and that is entirely different from being attacked for anything—for his position on Afghanistan, for a bill that went the wrong way, for his position on any issue.
And so we said very little, because we didn't want to create the—we didn't want to make the Briefing Room or the White House Press Office as a forum that felt appropriate to ask about his family members, as much as his son was going through some things, obviously had gone through some things.
His book—I read his book because I wanted to kind of understand where he was coming from, and I didn't really know him, because I hadn't worked on the campaign.I didn't know Hunter really, and I wasn't involved in all these decisions about how to handle things.And what it was a reminder to me, and how we started talking about it a little bit, is that he's kind of a human being who's been through a lot, right?A lot of families deal with drug addiction, family members with drug addiction, the repercussions of that, the fallout of that, trauma from loss.That's really what we're talking about here.
I can say all that now because I no longer work there, but that is how the president saw it, and we saw it.Like, this is a person who's been through trauma, who's dealt with something that so many Americans have dealt with.And we started to move toward talking about it a little bit more through that frame.
Biden Struggles in the Polls
So moving out of the period, as you're becoming more of an observer outside of the White House, I mean, he's struggling in the polls going into the election.As you look at it, does he bear responsibility for that?Is there something about that he has done or not done or should have done differently?Why does he seem to be struggling given the record that the White House points to?
Well, I think there are some intangible things that in any poll you see.And there's reasons—there's reasons why they're popping.One of them is the president's age, which the right wing has effectively made a massive issue since he became president.We were seeing this internal focus groups when I was still there, long before the campaign started.They laid the groundwork for that.
There is an incredible irony that he's just a couple of years older than Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is not actually running an Ironman next week.But it is still something that has taken hold.That has been one of the biggest challenges they have dealt with.Now, he has dealt with that more recently in a range of ways—humor, acknowledgment.And I think that's good and effective, and we'll see what happens.
I think there's been a couple of challenges that have contributed to the polls, including the fact that people in the country didn't want to accept that this was going to be the rematch or that Donald Trump would actually be the nominee.So there was a drop-off for a period of time of Democrats who were thinking there was going to be an alternative.Somebody was going to emerge from the wings somewhere.It's pretty clear that's not going to happen.And a lot of those people are coming back.
And we're also living in a divided country, where there are two versions of truths, I mean, one that is truth, and one that is a very large percentage of people in the Republican Party still don't believe the 2020 election was won by Joe Biden.So that is a reality we're dealing with.It is—was always going to be a close election.It is going to be a close election, incredibly close.There is always things you can change, but I'm not sure that that dynamic in the country is something any individual, including the president, can change.
Biden’s Age
You talk about the questions about his age.When you see him come out after the Hur report, and it's like an emergency press conference sort of thing, and he seems really angry and indignant, and there's questions about whether he remembered when his son died.Can you help me understand the human being that we see and how he responds to that accusation that he's not all there?
I obviously wasn't inside for all of this, so I'll just give you my outside assessment.You know, he did the interviews in the days after the Oct. 7 attack in Israel.During those interviews, which once the transcripts were released, it became pretty clear that he had an extensive memory and was quite coherent.And actually, Robert Hur forgot things at many points in time.I think the frustration, I'm betting, he felt is that they tried to do everything by the book, right, by saying, obviously, this was an independent decision made by the attorney general.But let's—there's a special counsel the attorney general decided on.This is a guy who was appointed by Trump, who appeared at press conferences inappropriately, at the White House, while he was serving in the Justice Department.He put lines in his report that were political in nature.I think that's the frustration that the president was feeling, kind of questioning whether he was up to the job, when in reality he had just spent many, many hours doing a lengthy interview, which he lived through and sat through while there was an international crisis happening.
So my bet is, he felt frustration that the context of that was not understood.It's hard to explain that context, because you know what pops up there in social media?The line from the Hur report.
We also wonder, because we're going to get biography, and he starts with the kid with the stutter, and some people think he's not that smart, and he has to prove himself, and he has to prove himself in '87.They say, “This is not a serious guy.”And he has to prove himself in the Obama administration when there's questions about him.And now here he is, at the end, he's president of the United States, and they're saying he's not alert.
Yes. Yeah. He has what I would call a very healthy chip on his shoulder in the sense that he always feels underestimated—not always, but often.You're commander in chief; you're probably the most powerful person in the world, and people are still underestimating you.Maybe that's the case with most presidents, but that being underestimated has, I think, prompted him to prove people wrong, right, to prove people wrong with getting bipartisan legislation done, with building a coalition of countries from around the world, with doing the two-hour press conference.
… It's a motivator.But it is something that still sits with him, even though he is president of the United States and was vice president for eight years and has one of the most accomplished legislative records of anyone who's ever served on the job—still underestimated.
Stakes of the 2024 Election
The stakes for him, when he makes that decision to run this year, as he sees it, as he sees the stakes for America, we just talked about some of the personal stakes, that he might be proving something, but there's also the stakes for America.And he faces that question of, will he run again?Just help me understand how he would see that and how he would make that decision.
Sure.I wasn't a part of those decisions or decision discussion because I wasn't there anymore, but I think in his heart of hearts, a Trump second term is an existential crisis that will change the trajectory of our country.I'm not trying to be dramatic.I think that's how he feels, and how a lot of people feel.And his view is, no one else has beaten him; he has beaten him before.If it was somebody else running, I wonder.We'll never know if he would have run for reelection.But that's not what we're—that's not the scenario we're living in at this point in time.
The last question, the question we ask everybody, is what is the choice in November, as you see it, that faces voters?
I think there is a big choice between someone who supports the fundamentals of who we are as a country, who believes that democracy should be what our country is based on, who believes in the voices of people, and somebody who believes that the system should work just for himself.That is the big meta argument.But I think there are a lot of issue arguments that will also matter to people, including, are you for abortion rights?Are you against abortion rights?Do you believe that people have the right to Social Security or not?
So I share all this because I think that—is climate change a real issue, or is it not?Do we not need to do anything about it?So there is a big, overarching choice here that is not that common in presidential elections, because typically, people from both parties have differences on policy issues, but they still believe in the foundations of what our Founding Fathers created the country on.That is not the case this year.That matters, and it has mattered to voters in the last couple elections.And I think the future of our democracy will certainly matter.
It makes me, sometimes—I worked for Barack Obama when he ran against John McCain, may he rest in peace, and Mitt Romney.It was such a different time, and those choices were very different from the choices that the country is dealing with in 2024.
Thank you very much.I just want to check, Michael Kirk, the director, is on, and see if I missed anything important.
[Director Michael Kirk] I have one little follow-up, which is, I watched that State of the Union address.When you watched it, take us there.What were you looking for?What were you worried about?Just give us a sense of what you saw, from your perch.
That's so funny you asked that question.It's such a good one.I was sitting on the set of MSNBC, and I was watching the speech, just like millions of people, and I was following along on the speech.And I did not actually anticipate in advance how edgy and political the speech would be, because the president is such a—respects the institution so much, and there's such a tradition of kind of going to Congress and delivering a speech that has political tinges but is not overtly political.That was perhaps the most overtly political State of the Union address I remember, at least in my time.
So watching it, I was thinking, wow, this is aggressive, energetic, in a good way.There was about, halfway through, where he started to get a little—I thought he got a little tired.And I was like, “Oh, gosh, keep going.Keep going.”And then he got energetic, when he had the back-and-forth with Marjorie Taylor Greene.So I was watching. I had like a stage-mom moment during the middle of the speech, but I was really pleasantly surprised by how edgy the speech was.
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Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
