One of the themes of this year's Texas Tribune Festival
is the relationship between the press corps
and the presidential administration.
Someone who knows a little something about that
is Josh Earnest, former Press Secretary for
former President Barack Obama.
You served 2014 to 2017.
As his press secretary for those three years,
but I was in the Obama White House as a spokesperson
in the White House for all eight years that he was there.
Welcome to the Texas Tribune Festival.
This is your first time, right?
It's my first time at the festival.
I've been to Texas many times. I went to college at Rice,
and then I actually did about
six weeks of the Obama primary in Texas
in the spring of 2008. So I actually have a
lot of good memories of Austin from that campaign.
Well we appreciate you being here.
I guess, as somebody's who stood behind that podium,
what have you made of the last nine, ten months or so
watching the current administration and
the current press secretaries field questions?
The current press secretaries for President Trump have
taken a different approach than the one that I felt
like worked pretty well for us in the Obama
White House, but that's true basically across the
administration, President Trump is very different than
his predecessor. Vice President Pence is fighting for
for different things and handles his job
very differently than Vice President Biden did.
So it's not particularly surprising that the spokesperson
who's supposed to reflect those views does it
in a pretty different way too. Obviously, I was rooting for
somebody else to win the election, but you know,
in the last several weeks of the Obama White House,
the disappointment of the outcome of the
election sort of turned into this feeling of responsibility about making
sure that we pass on a well-functioning White House to our successor
and root for their success. I hope that they can succeed
in advancing the country's interests and that they'd been
given the responsibility by the American people
to do so. And obviously I have some profound
differences and even some serious
concerns about the way they've handled their
responsibilities, but this is what our democracy
demands. And it's, there are times where, I won't lie,
it's been hard to watch, but look, this is
our system of government, and until somebody comes
along with a better one, this is what we're
going to endure.
You've written that it's a difficult job.
How did you, do you feel you were successful
in your role, and how do you measure that success?
That's — it's hard to know how to measure that success because the responsibility
of the White House press corps is to ask skeptical questions and to be, to demand
proof and evidence and logic in defending the position that you're
advocating. And so it means that there's never going to be a moment where I give
a really solid answer to a question in the briefing room and the reporters all sit
back and go, "Man that was really good, that just, you've convinced me." If there's
ever a day that that happens it means those reporters stop doing their job. So
the way that we tried to evaluate our success was how effective could we be in
shaping the coverage, how effective could we be in laying out an argument that
would show up in the coverage for why we were doing what we were doing, and how
did we fulfill our responsibilities to the American people to be transparent, to
be held accountable for the the actions that we were taking. And evaluating the
performance of somebody in this role is a little bit in the eye of the beholder
but the reason that I felt good about my performance in the way that we had
served is that I felt like I'd lived up to a pretty high standard of making sure
that even in the public eye that we were adhering to a core set of values that
President Obama campaigned on, and frankly a core set of values that I'd been
raised on. And we weren't perfect, but I think, by and large, we met that standard quite well.
Out of curiosity, have you talked to Sean Spicer since he's left that post?
He and I, we've been briefly in touch, but not had a substantive conversation. When he left, I
sent him a note wishing him well but I've not ... I'm gonna resist the urge
to make a joke about that, but I will say that. And that's true, you know,
obviously, serving in the White House is a demanding job, and he was obviously
there for a very demanding six months and,
you know, hopefully he will use a little bit more of this free time to spend some
time with his family, who I'm sure missed him when he was working really hard in
the White House. Real quick, what's next for you? Well, I'm working with NBC News
I'm on a contract with them, so I occasionally appear on television with
them, and I'm spending some time talking to people who have successfully made the
transition from service in government to service in the business world.
I'm looking for the next new challenge, I don't know what it's gonna be, but I'm excited about it.
Enjoy the Texas Tribune festival, and thanks for participating in today's panel.
I already am. It's nice to see you all.
Wonderful, nice to see you. Reporting in the 2017 Texas Tribune festival, I'm Alana Rocha.