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Four years ago to the very day, we were talking about Sean Spicer’s performance as Donald Trump’s new press secretary. Spicer’s first act in the White House press briefing room was to waltz in and declare that Trump had “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” That was what concerned Trump and the Trump White House on their very first day: people mocking Trump’s batsh-t crazy Struggle Inauguration, which was poorly attended and fascist. It set the tone for what would be the Trump White House’s constant abuse of journalists and the media writ large. The relationship between the WH and the media became so toxic, at some point the press secretaries just stopped doing press briefings entirely.

Well, if we needed any more evidence of “the return to normalcy,” President Biden’s new press secretary Jen Psaki gave the first press briefing of the Biden administration yesterday evening. It was great! She treated journalists with respect and tried to answer questions honestly and thoroughly. She didn’t berate anyone, squeal about “fake news” or throw out a bunch of lies. As I watched Psaki, I realized that it’s going to take a while for all of us to process the trauma of the past four-to-five years.

It was just nice. It was fun to watch everyone adjust, in real time, to the new normal of “wait, this is how it used to be, in the Before Time.” No one screamed, no one called female journalists “nasty,” no one pushed a bunch of lies about crowd size.

In another example of the Biden Administration’s back-to-normal approach with the press, President Biden invited the press pool into the Oval Office, where he confirmed that Donald Trump had left him a letter and the letter was “generous.” Hm. President Biden also signed a stack of Executive Orders, many of which were simple reversals of Trump-era EOs.

Jen Psaki told the press after this moment that Biden was not actually planning to speak to Trump any time soon, so the point is that we’ll probably never learn what’s in the letter. Hm.

Day 1 Press Briefings: Trump admin vs. Biden admin pic.twitter.com/S5wd57YrSr

— The Recount (@therecount) January 21, 2021

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