by Jen Psaki | Apr 29, 2026 | The Briefing with Jen Psaki
This is an adapted excerpt from the April 28 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
You may remember when, in the run-up to the 2024 election, Donald Trump sued “60 Minutes” on the premise that the show had committed “partisan and unlawful acts of election interference” after it aired an edited interview with Kamala Harris.
The Trump team accused the network of interfering in the election simply because it didn’t air the conversation in its entirety. In the end, they sued CBS and ended up with a $16 million settlement payment.
This weekend, “60 Minutes” did exactly the same thing — except this time with an interview with Trump.
It was clearly an attempt to bully the network into covering him more positively and his perceived enemies more negatively.
Norah O’Donnell interviewed Trump for 40 minutes, then producers edited that interview down to just 13 minutes. Now if that doesn’t sound all that scandalous to you, it’s because it’s not. That is how lots and lots of TV interviews work, especially for long-form interview programs like “60 Minutes.”
The only scandal here is that Trump pretended Harris’ interview was a scandal, all to threaten “60 Minutes” and its parent company, CBS. At one point, he even called for the network to lose its broadcast license.
It was clearly an attempt to bully the network into covering him more positively and his perceived enemies more negatively. And now we are seeing that bullying dynamic in play once again.
Trump’s Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday ordered a review of all broadcast station licenses owned by ABC. While the agency says the review is about the network’s diversity and inclusion policies,
by Jen Psaki | Apr 16, 2026 | The Briefing with Jen Psaki
This is an adapted excerpt from the April 14 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
If you needed any more evidence that Donald Trump has become an absolute parody of himself, look no further than what took place at the White House on Monday.
You may have seen images of the moment when a delivery driver showed up at the door of the Oval Office with the president’s McDonald’s order and praised him for the no-tax-on-tips policy that passed as part of his budget bill last year.
President Trump just received a McDonald’s delivery order from a DoorDash driver outside the Oval Office!Thanks to President Trump signing No Tax on Tips into law, Sharron is using the $11,000 in tips that she made last year to support her family. pic.twitter.com/5JkpJo839k— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) April 13, 2026
The White House clearly wanted to portray the scene as a chance encounter, as if Trump was just a regular guy waiting for his french fries — never mind the armed Secret Service agents or guarded gates this delivery driver somehow skipped through.
But, as you probably suspected, the whole thing was an attempt at a PR stunt.
The woman who showed up at the door of the Oval Office was not your average DoorDash driver — she was actually flown in from Arkansas. And prior to making that 900-mile delivery order, she appeared as a witness at Republican field hearings touting the president’s big, ugly bill. She also appeared in promotional videos put out by congressional Republicans supporting that bill.
But even though this entire event was staged, Trump still somehow found a way to make it incredibly awkward.
After
by Jen Psaki | Apr 11, 2026 | The Briefing with Jen Psaki
This is an adapted excerpt from the April 9 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
“America First” has been the rallying cry behind Donald Trump’s entire appeal as a politician. It’s one of the main reasons he has stuck around as a fixture in this country’s political life for over a decade. And it’s an essential part of the fairy tale he tells over and over again that only he can make America great again, because he will always “put America first.”
It is supposedly the basis of his entire policy platform, including a main priority of his second term: implementing his sweeping and shambolic tariff plan.
Despite everything that America has been facing since the start of Trump 2.0, the ballroom is one of those topics that the president just cannot help but bring up at every possible opportunity.
According to Trump, his tariffs are supposed to protect and boost U.S. production. Especially for one American industry he has long claimed is near and dear to his heart: steel manufacturing.
The president’s promise to boost production of U.S. steel not only helped him get back in the White House, but after a year in power, it has helped him maintain the support of many of his fanatical supporters, even as he does one unprecedented, crazy thing after another — like, say, tearing down and destroying the entire historic East Wing of the White House just so he can try to build the giant, gilded, gaudy ballroom of his dreams.
Despite everything that America has faced since the start of Trump 2.0, the ballroom is one of the projects the president appears to be most focused on. He
by Jen Psaki | Feb 6, 2026 | The Briefing with Jen Psaki
This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 5 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
Donald Trump is ordering his subordinates to give him your money. Let me explain.
Scott Bessent has two jobs. He is simultaneously serving as Trump’s treasury secretary and as the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.
That means that when Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department last week for $10 billion — accusing the agency of failing to prevent a contractor from leaking his tax returns to the press during his first administration — the president was effectively asking Bessent, his direct subordinate, to give him billions of dollars.
On Thursday, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona held Bessent’s feet to the fire during a hearing on Capitol Hill, questioning the treasury secretary over where exactly he would take that $10 billion from to give to his boss.
Trump wants $10 billion of taxpayer money, and he is just asking his subordinates to give it to him.
Bessent was forced to admit that money would be taken from the agency’s general account, meaning U.S taxpayers would be footing the bill.
That’s right. Trump wants $10 billion of taxpayer money, and he is just asking his subordinates to give it to him.
But Bessent ultimately passed the buck on to Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying that because the Justice Department is the defendant in the case, this was really more of a question for her.
Now set aside that, historically, attorneys general have been expected to operate with some level of independence. Trump shattered that norm quite some time ago, so it’s fair to say Bondi operates as Trump’s direct subordinate,
by Jen Psaki | Feb 6, 2026 | The Briefing with Jen Psaki
This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 4 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
American democracy is under threat. Right now, Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to undermine the validity of the midterm elections, using the same language he used in the lead-up to 2020 to sow doubt in the outcome if he did not win.
On Wednesday, Trump was asked about his recent calls for an unconstitutional federal takeover of our elections. “We can’t allow cheating in elections,” he told NBC News, adding, “If they [the states] can’t do it honestly and it can’t be done properly and timely, then something else has to happen.”
The president was also asked if he would accept the will of the voters in November if Republicans lost control of Congress. “I will, if the elections are honest,” Trump replied.
There’s a simple and obvious reason Trump is doing this. He knows he has become increasingly unpopular, and he does not think he and his party can win on their own.
A crucial element of that strategy — a critical part of how he tries to lie his way out of unpopularity — is to make it so that his narrative is the only one people hear.
A new Quinnipiac University poll found Trump’s approval rating is now just 37% — that’s three points down from where he was in that same poll just three weeks ago. On every issue from the economy to immigration to foreign policy, his approval rating continues to sink to new and deeper lows.
So Trump is doing what he has done his entire life: He’s trying to lie and cheat his
by Jen Psaki | Jan 23, 2026 | The Briefing with Jen Psaki
This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 21 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
Do you remember Lindsey Halligan? She’s a former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, former insurance lawyer and White House staffer with no prosecutorial experience whom the president tried to install as a U.S. attorney to go after his perceived enemies.
In September, Attorney General Pam Bondi initially appointed Halligan to serve as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after the president’s previous interim pick resigned amid pressure to prosecute his foes.
Shortly after Halligan’s appointment, she secured indictments against two of the president’s biggest targets: New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
Just hours after that order, Halligan quit, leaving Trump without one of his handpicked legal puppets in the position of doing his dirty work.
But, as it turns out, installing an unqualified henchwoman to go after your political enemies is not legal.
In November, a federal judge dismissed indictments against James and Comey and officially ruled that Halligan had been unlawfully appointed.
On Tuesday evening, another federal judge ordered Halligan to stop referring to herself as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia — because legally, she was not the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The judge then threatened disciplinary sanctions for any government lawyer who continued to refer to her as U.S. attorney in legal filings.
Wouldn’t you know it, just hours after that order, Halligan quit, leaving Trump without one of his handpicked legal puppets in the position of doing his dirty work.
We are seeing something very similar play out at the Federal Reserve.
See, the
