MS NOW’s Peter Alexander Reunites with Jen Psaki, Implies Leavitt Lies

Nicholas Spinnato
August 14th, 2026 11:08 AM

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On Thursday, near the end of the first week hosting his new MS NOW program, State of Play, former NBC News chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander reunited with former Biden Press Secretary and current MS NOW primetime host Jen Psaki as they implied departing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had lied to the press throughout her tenure.

After a brief reminiscing about their interactions in the briefing room during the Biden Administration, the now-coworkers first discussed Leavitt's departure. 

Alexander, who said “I think of myself as an advocate not for Republicans or for Democrats, but as an advocate for the facts” in a promotional campaign for his new show, asked Psaki about a rule from her book:

In your book, the first rule that you wrote for a press secretary is “don't lie.” Is it possible to serve as press secretary to Donald Trump and maintain that rule

 

 

Psaki answered, “No, because you have an audience of one. Donald Trump is her audience.”

Psaki may have been guilty of failing her own rule in her time as press secretary, especially during the aftermath of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.

She then expanded with slight praise and a hit on the new briefing room makeup:

He clearly loves her, as far as we know. She is very good at commanding that room, though I will say, as you know well, the room has massively changed since I was there. It's much more filled with people who are there to kind of applaud Donald Trump and people who fare there to spit out the Republican talking points than the room that I was working in.

Psaki then seemed to resonate with her departure and said, “Let me say one thing about her, though. I was the communications director when I had a baby. It is very hard to do that. And she has a toddler, and she just had a newborn. I don't know her. I don't know all of the reasons, but I certainly understand the difficulty of trying to balance those things.”

Alexander then expanded off Psaki’s briefing room “changes” complaints, and added, “I witnessed this firsthand, having been there for Obama, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump again. There were a lot more sort of friendlies, as they're sometimes described, those people who support the president's view as opposed to view themselves as an independent journalist.”

Psaki explained how she worried viewers would not differentiate the reporters who asked questions and said, “Therefore, people are not getting actual transparent information, or they're not able to rely on the journalists who are in the room to ask the questions that need to be asked.”

 

 

Later in the show, and on a different subject, Alexander continued to showcase his new MS NOW bias and asked if the release of American Robert Gilman from Russian imprisonment was politicized. 

Alexander began, “We are glad that he is back home and hopefully getting all the care that he deserves right now.” However, there was a “but”:

Clearly, everybody celebrates an American coming home. But is there a danger to maybe politicizing his return? The fact that he's not wearing a U.S. hat, but a “Trump Was Right About Everything” hat handed to him by Sebastian Gorka and Steve Witkoff there on the plane with his family.

Interestingly enough, as Alexander mentioned the “Trump Was Right About Everything Hat,” the picture of Gilman onscreen showed him wearing a black American hat and a black American flag sweatshirt.

If the first week was a guide for the rest of Alexander’s program, instead of “advocate for the facts," he seemed poised to follow the MS NOW liberal host playbook like the rest of the daytime programming had turned into.

The transcript is below. Click "expand":

MS NOW’s State of Play

August 13, 2026

11:03:58 AM Eastern

(...)

PETER ALEXANDER: We want to bring in the host of The Briefing, Jen Psaki. She joins us here. Jen, thank you so much for being here.

JEN PSAKI: It's great to be - First of all, as someone who has been on the receiving end of some relentless  -

ALEXANDER: Careful.

PSAKI: - Peter Alexander grilling, I'm very happy you're here. I think that's needed in this moment and will definitely be needed as we look ahead to a huge primary in 2028.

ALEXANDER: I'm grateful for you saying that. My favorite moments were when you would call on me, and your eyes would start to go like this, like, where are we going to go with this?

PSAKI: It was always a tell. [Laughs]

ALEXANDER: I get to do I get to do it again right now. Let me ask you some questions. You were the former White House press secretary, the current White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has just announced that she's going to be departing. She'll leave at the end of the month. She just had a second baby. She wants more time, she has said, with her family here

In your book, the first rule that you wrote for a press secretary is “don't lie.” Is it possible to serve as press secretary to Donald Trump and maintain that rule?

PSAKI: No, because you have an audience of one. Donald Trump is her audience. He clearly loves her, as far as we know. She is very good at commanding that room, though I will say, as you know well, the room has massively changed since I was there. It's much more filled with people who are there to kind of applaud Donald Trump and people who are there to spit out the Republican talking points then the room that I was working in

Let me say one thing about her, though. I was the communications director when I had a baby. It is very hard to do that. And she has a toddler, and she just had a newborn. I don't know her. I don't know all of the reasons, but I certainly understand the difficulty of trying to balance those things.

ALEXANDER: You talk about the changes in the White House briefing room. I witnessed this firsthand, having been there for Obama, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump again. There were a lot more sort of friendlies, as they're sometimes described, those people who support the president's view as opposed to view themselves as an independent journalist. 

What is the risk of the sort of changing system in the way the president relates to the press and those people who are invited into the room?

PSAKI: Well, I think if you're watching the briefing, and most Americans are not watching the totality of the briefing, but -

ALEXANDER: Or in the Oval Office -

PSAKI: Or in the Oval Office in both places. Look, I think, first of all, as you know, well, but for anybody watching, there's still excellent journalists who are there to grill the white house, no matter who the press secretary is and who the president is in the room. It's just that they are a smaller percentage of people in the room. 

And what is difficult, if you're a viewer watching the briefing or clips of it, or watching the president be questioned in the Oval Office, is you don't know how to differentiate. How do you know who these people are? Is it Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend, who is literally - or now her husband, who is literally one of the people asking questions about Trump's fitness, physical fitness?

ALEXANDER: Sean Spicer, a former White House press secretary, was sometimes in the room asking the new press secretary questions.

PSAKI: Exactly. And it becomes a larger percentage of the questions asked in the room. So, therefore, people are not getting actual transparent information, or they're not able to rely on the journalists who are in the room to ask the questions that need to be asked.

(....)

11:52:45 AM Eastern

ALEXANDER: I want to ask you more about those other Americans in a moment. Let me just follow up with one other thought on Robert Gilman. And first of all, the president and the Trump Administration certainly deserve credit. They're the ones who got Mr. Gilman home. So we are glad that he is back home and hopefully getting all the care that he deserves right now. 

But as we saw in some of the video, he and his mom were given these red trump hats before they even reached U.S. soil. Only the administration, obviously not the family or your organization, has released the images of Robert now being free. Clearly, everybody celebrates an American coming home. But is there a danger to maybe politicizing his return? The fact that he's not wearing a U.S. hat, but a “Trump Was Right About Everything” hat handed to him by Sebastian Gorka and Steve Witkoff there on the plane with his family.

KIERAN RAMSEY: You know, the tough thing is with any of these cases, while they're being held and then when they're coming home, we don't want this to be a political issue. And we talk about this a lot with members on the Hill. We never want this to even be described as a bipartisan issue. We want this to be a nonpartisan issue, an American issue. And getting these people home should be one of the top priorities of the U.S. Government, whether it be from Russia, from China, from Iran, from Afghanistan, and the list goes on. And, again, when they come home, the most important consideration is getting them the mental health, the physical health treatments, everything else like that, because they went through a living hell, quite honestly.

(...)

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