Jen Psaki Gets the Annie Leibovitz Treatment in Glowing Vogue Profile

White House Jen Psaki shoes (White House / Flickr / Cropped)
White House / Flickr / Cropped

Vogue magazine, which refused to profile First Lady (and former supermodel) Melania Trump throughout four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, published a lavish puff piece on President Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, Monday.

The profile features glamour shots by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, and hard-hitting journalism by Lizzie Widdicombe, who notes that Psaki doesn’t “want to be the center of attention” and takes makeup advice from CNN.

Jen Psaki and Annie Leibovitz (Chip Somodevilla / Getty)

WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 03: Photographer Annie Leibovitz (R) makes images of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki as she conducts the daily news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on June 03, 2021 in Washington, DC. Psaki faced questions about the ongoing negotiations between the Biden Administration and Congress over infrastructure and other topics. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Vogue gushes that Psaki has evoked “a collective swoon from roughly half the country,” and opines that she is better than predecessors such as Harvard Law School graduate Kayleigh McEnany, who faced a far more hostile press.

Widdicombe also notes that former Barack Obama political aide David Axelrod considers her “the best press secretary in his lifetime,” though Obama passed her up for Jay Carney and Josh Earnest (she was “devastated,” Vogue notes).

Vogue credits Psaki with being “good at mending fences,” carefully “healing” the country — though that has not stopped Psaki from defending her boss’s use of the term “Jim Crow” to describe Republicans and the Senate filibuster.

The magazine also notes that Psaki resents being called “nice,” considering it a “sexist” and “diminishing” term.

The magazine featured First Lady Dr. Jill Biden on the cover of its August issue. In related news, climate change activist Greta Thunberg is featured on the first cover of Vogue‘s Scandinavian issue: “The Wonder of Greta Thunberg.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

(Note: the photo above is credited to the official White House Flickr account, but closely resembles a photo credited to Leibovitz by Vogue that was taken on June 3, 2021, the same day Leibovitz was reported to be at the White House. Wire photos show Leibovitz positioned at the same angle from which the White House official photo was captured.)

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