Broadcasting across California, you're watching the issue is,
and welcome to the issue is.
I'm Alex Michaelson and with us for the half hour,
one of the most recognizable faces in all of politics.
We're talking about Jen Saki,
of course. She is currently the host of Inside with
Jen Saki airing Sunday mornings and Monday evenings on MSNBC.
Before that, she served as President Joe Biden's first White
House press secretary,
leading the country through the pandemic.
She previously served Barack Obama in different roles,
including as White House communications director,
And she served as a spokesperson for the State Department,
working for then Secretary of State John Kerry.
She talks about all of that and more in her
new book Say More Lessons from Work,
The White House and the World,
available now and already a New York Times bestseller.
Congratulations on the book, Jen Sake.
Welcome. The issue is thank you.
It's great to be here with you.
Great to have you for the first time.
So I love the book.
Read the whole thing. Recommended for people.
Thank you. It's a great guide not only to politics
but sort of being a successful communicator in life,
which I think all of us could use help on.
And I want to get into this in a moment,
but let's start with some of the news of the
week.
I know you saw the big New York Times Siena
College poll this week that showed Joe Biden behind in
most of the swing states.
RealClearPolitics put out a map of all the recent averages
of
of where the election would be if it was held
today.
Donald Trump winning with 312 electoral votes.
How do you see the state of the race right
now?
And is Joe Biden behind?
I see the race is very close.
This poll is not a poll that if you're sitting
on the Biden campaign that you love to see,
these are not great numbers.
Concerning is the number of people who voted for him
in 2020 who now are not saying they're with him.
That's also an opportunity. They can probably get those people
back.
Concerning is also the number of people who see the
economy as a top issue,
who are not leaning toward him despite all of the
things that have happened.
Concerning is also that 20%
of people in that poll blame him for the Dobbs
decision,
also an opportunity. This is going to be a very
close election.
There are some warning signs in there.
I don't think the Biden campaign is unaware of them.
But for people who thought this would be easy,
it's not. It's not going to be easy.
And. And one thing that I think you've talked about
some is this concept of strength versus weakness,
right. And President Biden ran on this idea of competence.
Let's be the adult in the room.
And there are a lot of things that are sort
of chaotic right now.
We look at what's happening at the border where there
hasn't been a lot of control.
We look at what's happening on college campuses.
We look at what's happening in Israel with Gaza in
all of these situations.
It seems like he isn't in control,
or at least that's the perception by some people.
How does he change that?
Are you worried that he may be perceived as old
and weak and not in control?
Well, I think the chaos is,
to your point, something that people vote against,
right? They vote against chaos,
and that often means they want an alternative,
a change. Even though Trump was a very chaotic president
for the Biden team,
there is a perception issue on each of those issues.
If you break them down there is an explanation but
it is still undoubtedly a challenge because it's if you're
explaining you're often losing because the public is like I
don't know about it that I feel chaotic.
You've talked about Trump's strategy is is pretty clear basically
running against the system.
Yeah he's got this situation where he's on trial and
and he has got all these different people that want
to be vice president showing up to the court weird.
What do you make of of that whole thing
that that's going on as as as his communication strategy
right now.
I mean, I don't even think,
well, the the benefit to Trump is that he has
all of these people from his party doing what he
can't do because it would violate the gag order,
right? JD Vance, Mike Johnson,
others, Vivek Ramaswamy, they are going out there and basically
attacking the judge,
the jury, the judge's daughter,
the prosecutor. Trump can't do that.
Michael Cohen, he can't do that.
It would violate the gag order.
So they're doing his dirty work for him.
So in that sense, it's helpful to him.
Them, their audience for their communication is Trump,
which tells you how much he owns the Republican Party.
There are exceptions to this shore,
but writ large, the fact that the speaker of the
House is going to New York to kiss the ring
and go out there and attack people Trump can't attack
tells you a whole lot.
Who do you think is leading the Veep stakes right
now?
Oh, God, that requires me getting in Trump's brain.
That's a hard thing.
I think Tim Scott has a real shot.
I think Trump will do it by people he
can dominate but he thinks will give him political value.
You do have an insight,
though, about being a staffer,
and you as a staffer,
you get to know the person you work for better
than just about anybody,
spend more time with them.
What do you make of the fact that when it
comes to Trump,
his vice president, his Secretary of State,
his Secretary of Defense, his chief of staff,
his national security advisor all say
don't vote for him. And yet that doesn't seem to
be resonating.
Why do you think that is?
It should be alarming to people when you have all
of these national security officials,
former prom and people who know him well saying don't
vote for him.
It's scary. But a lot of people don't know who
they are and it's like it it it doesn't resonate
to them now.
I don't think it will never matter.
It could be a very powerful ad if the Biden
campaign took a bunch of these people,
if they were willing to do it,
and they may not be,
and put them on air and made television ads,
that might be powerful, but they may not be willing
to do that.
We're talking to Jen Saki,
the author of Say More.
And what's what's interesting about your book is it's not
really just a memoir,
it's really written as a how to guide on how
to better communicate in different aspects of your life.
Why did you choose to do it that way?
When I left the White House,
I thought a lot about things I wish I would
have known when I was in my 20s and starting
my career.
And I'm sure you have many of these as well.
Things that you learn along the way,
mistakes you made, moments you wish you were more confident
or or believed more in,
your right to be in a room or in an
anchor chair,
whatever it may be. And I also thought a lot
about the advice I would want to give my kids
who are 8 and six.
So not quite yet, although my 8 year old is
very precocious and she's read like half the book.
What does your 8 year old think of the book?
She, she really has searched through for references to herself.
Like everybody in Washington, she's the reference person.
She likes the photo. She's come with me to a
couple of book events.
And you write about the fact that Barack Obama and
other folks in the administration were very
accepting of you creating boundaries to leave time for your
daughter as well,
which is really great. Yeah.
And I was very fortunate because President Obama,
the entire White House were very supportive.
I left work at 5:30 nearly every day.
I tried to leave on Fridays early
and it, it helped make it possible.
So you worked for two presidents and one guy who
almost was president,
1, stayed away from being president,
as John Kerry I'm sure would remind you.
Ohio, so he wouldn't say
exactly like that. Ohio, let's go through.
I I think it'd be interesting to talk about,
compare and contrast the three of them,
what it was like working for them.
So let's start with John Kerry,
who was the first person you worked for,
Secretary of State. You also worked on his campaign.
And you say what people think about him is really
wrong.
Yeah. How so? Well, I worked for him twice when
I was a kid,
press secretary, as I say,
press person on his presidential campaign.
And then when I was the spokesperson at the State
Department,
when I interviewed for the spokesperson at the State Department
job,
I came into that interview thinking,
this is a guy who everybody thinks is aloof and
unfriendly.
He's completely the opposite. He is like a very smart
and very experienced.
But Labrador, I mean, he gave me a huge hug
in my interview.
He's a person. When we were traveling overseas,
he would knock on your door and all the doors
of the staff and say,
let's go walk around, let's go to dinner.
And I found him to be so tireless as a
diplomat,
but also a really wonderful human being to work for.
And I don't think people saw that when he ran
for president.
And then you work for Barack Obama and you tell
this story,
which is just hilarious about your sort of first meeting
with him.
Yes. And it, it was like something out of a
slapstick comedy.
Yes. Well, he, he was already a larger than life
figure.
I mean, he'd given the best speech ever given at
a convention.
I think it's most people would say that
2004, 1004 and I was started to work for him
in
2007. So the first time I met him was in
October of
2007. The campaign sent me out to staff him,
which means go with him to events in Ohio.
And I was sitting in his car because they do
that so that they're ready to go when the candidate
gets off the plane.
And I thought, Oh my goodness,
I'd better say something cool or interesting when he,
when he gets off the plane and he got in
the car and I said,
you may be wondering who I am and why I'm
in your car.
And I was like, that was cool,
You know, I did well there.
And then I caught the handle of my bag on
somehow on the car door and spilled the contents of
my bag into his lap.
I mean, you know, everything,
lipstick, tampons, makeup, whatever, notepads,
probably a BlackBerry at the time because that was the
time he was very graceful about it.
But I think with him,
and he's just a good example of this because he
was a great boss.
I worked from for 10 years,
a amazing human being who thinks about things in a
nuanced way,
but so larger than life publicly,
that I was intimidated as a
younger, relatively younger staffer. And it took me a couple
of years,
and I talked about this journey in the book to
really feel comfortable
not worrying that I was going to say something stupid
or give him advice.
He didn't. He didn't agree with or things like that.
Was President Biden less intimidating?
I was a little bit older.
I mean, I'd had two kids.
You know, I don't know.
I own a house, not that that matters.
I was married. And I think I went into that
job with just a little bit more
confidence in my own skin,
comfort in my own skin.
And I knew that because I was going to be
speaking on his behalf,
I didn't work on the campaign.
I had to develop a connection so that I could
make him feel he could share things with me or
I could give him tough feedback so it was expedited.
But he's also somebody who is very relatable.
I remember sitting down with him maybe a couple of
weeks into my job and saying to him,
which is a strange thing to say to the president,
is this coming out of your mouth?
You're like, should I be saying this where I said,
I feel like I've known you a long time.
So I think that's a strange thing to say to
a president,
but I've already said it.
Well, yeah. So. And he had been on TV for
50 years.
Yeah. He's on TVA long time.
But he he is a very,
you know, I I, there's many times where I was
in the Oval Office where his grandchildren would come in
and he would do the things grandpas do,
where he was like you drop something and it was
like a $20 bill,
like he'd left on the floor.
So I I was more confident in my own skin
and that helped me connect with him faster.
What was the biggest difference between the three of them?
Oh, God.
I think that President Obama,
people think of him as an extrovert because he's such
a tremendous speaker.
But from what I saw,
I think he's an introvert,
which is not a bad thing.
It just means you gain your your energy from being
alone and being thoughtful.
President Biden is an extrovert.
I it's exhausting. I mean,
when he was kind of tired of going on the
road,
we brought more members of Congress and elected officials with
him because he just enjoyed the trips so much more.
And John Kerry I think is different because he's so
optimistic and tireless in a way and almost like unfettered
by his years in Washington,
which made him unique in that way.
It's always interesting. I remember watching when Obama and Biden
would work a rope line together.
Oh yeah, how much Obama wanted to be done.
And Joe Biden was was way behind.
He was talking to connecting with people.
It's just not the way he a different way.
But President Biden, yes, he could spend 3 hours on
a rope line.
I want to ask you about one thing that's gotten
some attention this week from the book,
which was a story you told about President Biden looking
at his watch after
caskets had come back from Afghanistan.
The story was not told it it completely accurately,
which you've acknowledged. I know some of the folks,
including some of the families of those soldiers who were
upset by that.
I just want to give you an opportunity to clarify
what happened.
Yeah. First I mean the the larger story there and
the reason I included that story is because I wanted
to convey a story about giving tough feedback to President
Biden which the which the context of that was telling
him that when he shared stories about the loss of
his own son that that wasn't resonating with these families
who had experienced the worst day of their lives.
So actually my objective was to validate their experience and
not the opposite.
And as I've noted, we will it's a couple of
lines in the book that
we will change and will be taken out the totality
of it in the book.
But but my objective was actually to honor them and
validate their experience not the opposite.
Up next, Jen Saki. Surprisingly close relationship with Fox News.
We are talking with Jen Saki.
Of course, as you were White House press secretary,
the person he probably went back and forth with the
most was Peter Ducey from Fox News.
But here is what happened on your last day
at the briefing. Go ahead.
Thank you, Jen.
Sorry to see you go.
Are you?
Yes. And you've always been a good sport.
You know, I think Peter came into that room and
he
his objective was to deliver on kind of the issues
that his network was focused on on that particular day.
That was his job.
There. There is often critical of the president.
And then I was working for the president.
But I will say that he would come to see
me
during after the briefing and we would talk about issues
off the record or on the record or on backgrounds.
He was always professional. So we did have a combative
back and forth in the briefing room,
but we did have a very professional good relationship otherwise.
You studied all the previous White House press secretaries.
You watched video clips of them.
You talked to many of them.
I'm curious. When future White House press secretaries study you,
what do you want them to remember about your time
and to learn from you?
Oh, wow.
I think, I hope on my best days that I
came with an argument that I kept the tone civil.
But I came with a rundown of facts in English.
And what I mean by that is
President Biden is allergic to acronyms and other things,
as am I right? And sometimes you you,
you go into it just because
for a range of reasons.
But my best days were when I could fight back
an argument and talk about it in a way that
people outside of Washington would understand
that. And then now you've moved into this new role
of being an anchor person.
Yes. What's been the biggest surprise or maybe thing you
didn't realize about what people on the other side were
doing?
Now that you're on the other side,
you know you're very good at this.
So this may just come natural to you.
But what I didn't realize is that conducting an interview,
especially if it's with a newsmaker or elected official and
your trying to kind of make the conversation interesting,
is much more work than answering the question.
In a lot of ways I agree with that.
You know you have it is easier to be interviewed
than to do and be interviewed because you you should
always be listening,
right? Because otherwise you're not responding to the person you're
talking to.
I talked about that in the book.
But when you're conducting an interview,
a person who one of my bosses,
the many said to me early on,
nobody at home knows your plan.
Meaning if you know this well,
right? I'm telling something people watching who they you already
know this.
If you have a list of 10 questions and the
4th question is about North Korea,
and you expect the person just to say
we don't have diplomatic relations and whatever,
and they say something entirely different.
You don't go on to the fifth question about health
care.
You keep talking about North Korea because it's interesting.
So it's a conversation. So it doesn't necessarily surprise me,
but that's the thing that's been
an adjustment, or I didn't think about it through that
perspective because we've got a whole list of stuff and
I haven't really followed it at all.
So which is great for the director to send it
back.
Yeah. One of the people that you've talked to in
your job as Inside with Jen Saki is Governor Gavin
Newsom.
I traveled with him to Alabama,
I know, and he promoted that heavily.
What do you make of him?
How does he compare to some of the other national
figures that you've interviewed?
I interviewed him a couple times,
but when I interviewed him in Alabama,
he was engaging. You know,
Alabama's not a blue state.
It's safe to say that's an easy it's red as
your hair.
It's quite red state. And what was so interesting about
his trip there is that,
and he's done this other places,
is that he wanted me to talk about things that
were values for him
in a way that was fearless of what people might
say.
I have spent a lot of time with a lot
of people who are.
I don't know if he'll run or not want to
be president,
but want to be president one day.
There's a very exciting crop of people I think out
there.
I know this election is tough for people to digest,
but there's a very exciting crop of people.
He's certainly is one of them.
As somebody who spent time with president,
does he have the presidential vibe to you?
I don't even know what that means.
He is tall. That's good.
Look, I think the the presidential vibe I would say
is authenticity and ability to connect,
right. And. And all of the people I've worked for
do that in different ways.
But I am always surprised.
You probably are, too, by people running for president who
don't know how to answer why they're running for president.
Yep. Ted Kennedy had that problem so many years ago.
Derailed his campaign. Yes. And many since him.
Right. Yeah. And who don't think about what they actually
think about big issues in the world.
Right. So to me it's it's
are you comfortable enough in your own skin to speak
your own views and your own values and see if
people agree with it?
That's kind of an intangible,
but you see it when you see it on the
trail.
It is amazing because because of that,
whenever I'm interviewing a presidential candidate,
my first question is always why are you running for
president,
which should be the biggest softball there is.
And yet, often times it isn't
Somehow, when
we come back sake on balancing work and family,
we're talking to Jen Saki,
the author of Say More.
In here, you talk a lot about work life balance,
and I'm wondering if you can give your sort of
main message to working moms and working dads who
are, you know, confused on how to quote,
UN quote, have it all.
Well, it's impossible to have it all to make choices.
It means that when I was the White House press
secretary,
I tried to come home at 5:00 on Fridays to
do pizza night with my kids and my sister and
niece and nephew.
It it means that I also left at
6:45 in the morning for work,
right? It meant that my kids got up at 5:00
in the morning.
We defined our own parameters of what it looked like,
and I think that has been a bit of a
saving grace for me and my husband as we've kind
of turned to balance.
2 working parents and two kids and jobs and all
of the things together.
Up next, Saki plays personal issues.
So we're going to wrap up our conversation with Jen
Saki with two games that we play here on the
show.
These are rapid fire games.
So the first one is called the name Game.
OK, so this is, we're going to say names to
people.
You're going to make me.
We're going to do that next.
OK, That's called. That's personal issues.
This is the name game.
These are all people, you know.
OK. But the first word that comes to mind when
you think about it.
OK, here we go. Joe Biden
Warm Jill by
Smart Kamala Harris
Charismatic. Donald Trump. Gross Robert F Kennedy junior
worms. Brain worm this week Barack Obama
brilliant. Michelle Obama
Oh like fierce. John Kerry
optimistic. And finally, your Co host now at MSNBC,
Rachel Maddow. Genius. All right.
Very nice. And now we end with this is your
pop culture favorite.
So this isn't a test.
This is just the first thing that comes to mind
of your favorites to get to know you a little
bit better.
Here we go. What is your favorite TV show?
Shogun is my current favorite favorite movie.
Oh my God,
I don't know. I'll have to come back to that
favorite musical artist.
I we're T Swiss people in my house.
My daughter has really influenced me,
but I do love her favorite book.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Ingenious is one of my
old school favorites.
I love it. And who is your role model?
Oh my God,
does that. Does that a bell?
No. You can keep going.
When I was starting my job,
now that I have, I did look to people like
George Stephanopoulos on how he conducts himself in interviews.
He, he transitioned in a different time where there wasn't
social media and things along those lines.
But having worked on the other side,
what I admired so much about him was that he
always makes news and interviews,
but he does it in like a calm and respectful
way.
And I thought that's such a good model,
that's really that is a good model.
And since you brought up Taylor Swift,
favorite Taylor Swift song I do like to listen to
Bejeweled a lot in my car.
I think that's still a good one.
Katie Porter was on. She said the same one she
did.
I mean, I do want to drive around in a
car with Katie Porter with a whiteboard.
I just think it would be fun.
It's for another man blasting Bejeweled.
Well, I have a life in the fast lane ready
for you because I feel like that's what you've been
living for a while and even in the air too.
I got to throw him in there May rest in
peace.
Jen Sake again. The book for the 50th time is
called Say More Lessons from Work,
The White House and the World.
What a pleasure it's been talking with you so much.
Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.
We'll see you next week for more of the issue
is.