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President-elect Joe Biden will have an all-female high-level communications team in his White House, led by campaign communications director Kate Bedingfield.
Bedingfield will serve as director of communications for the Biden White House. Jen Psaki, a longtime Democratic spokeswoman, will serve as his press secretary.
Biden also plans to appoint Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, as director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to a person familiar with the transition process who was awarded the anonymity to speak freely on internal matters. deliberations.
All three are veterans of the Obama administration. Bedingfield served as Biden’s chief communications officer while vice president; Psaki was director of communications for the White House and spokesman for the State Department; and Tanden served as a senior advisor to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and helped develop the Affordable Care Act.
“Communicating directly and sincerely with the American people is one of the most important duties of a president, and this team will be entrusted with the tremendous responsibility of connecting the American people with the White House,” Biden said in a statement.
“These skilled and experienced communicators bring diverse perspectives to their work and a shared commitment to better rebuild this country,” he added.
Karine Jean Pierre, who was Chief of Staff to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, will serve as the President-elect’s Chief Deputy Assistant Secretary for Press. She is another alumnus of the Obama administration, having served as the regional political director for the White House office of political affairs.
Pili Tobar, who was the coalitions’ communications director in Biden’s campaign, will be his deputy White House communications director. Most recently, she was deputy editor of America’s Voice, an advocacy group for immigration reform, and was a member of the press staff of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y.
The transition also announced the appointment of three top Biden campaign advisers to top communication positions. Ashley Etienne, former communications director for Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, will serve as Harris’s communications director. Symone Sanders, another senior advisor to Biden’s campaign, will serve as Harris’s senior advisor and spokesperson.
Elizabeth Alexander, who served as the former vice president’s press secretary and communications director while he was a senator from Delaware, will serve as Jill Biden’s communications director.
The hires reflect Biden’s stated desire to build a diverse White House team: Four of the seven major communication roles will be filled by women of color, and it is the first time that the entire House’s senior communications team Blanca has been completely feminine.
But they also reflect what is expected to be a return to a more traditional White House press operation, after President Donald Trump changed the ways his administration communicated with the press.
In contrast to the precedent set by past administrations, Trump’s communications team held few press conferences, and those that did occur were often militant affairs riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods. Trump himself sometimes served as his own press secretary, answered questions from the media, and often bypassed the White House press corps altogether by flagging his favorite Fox News shows.
After his campaign went virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden faced some of his own criticism for not being accessible to journalists. But near the end of the campaign, he answered questions from the press more frequently, and his transition team has held weekly briefings since he was elected president.
The election of several veterans of the Obama administration, many of them with deep relations with the Washington press corps, suggests a return to a more pleasant relationship with the press.
Meanwhile, at OMB, Tanden would be responsible for preparing Biden’s budget presentation and would command several hundred budget analysts, economists, and policy advisers with in-depth knowledge of the inner workings of government.
His election may appease progressives, who have been pressuring Biden to show his commitment to progressive priorities with his first staff appointments. She was elected over more moderate voices with roots in the party’s anti-deficit wing, such as Bruce Reed, who was director of staff for President Barack Obama’s 2010 deficit commission, which proposed a set of politically painful recommendations that never were followed. – AP
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