Fahrenthold: How much is too much nepotism in the White House?
Jun 22, 2021, 12:20 PM
Is the Washington Post’s mission to try to balance the number of Donald Trump scandals it reports on with Joe Biden scandals? The latest might be nepotism among members of Biden’s staff.
“We’re not trying to balance the ledger or anything,” Post reporter David Fahrenthold told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. “This is our job. He’s a new president and we’re trying to figure out what the news president is doing.”
Fahrenthold explained the Post ran a story about how children or relatives of some of Biden’s high-level staff were getting jobs with the administration.
“It’s only about five instances, but it’s happening,” he said.
For instance, Jen Psaki, White House spokesperson, has a sister who now has a job with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Biden administration says the people they’ve hired are qualified, but ethics experts remind them that they promised to do better than Trump.
“This is better than Trump,” Fahrenthold said. “Biden hasn’t employed his family members as high-level advisers. But ‘better than Trump’ shouldn’t be the new standard. They don’t believe this should be happening at all.”
As for Trump, Dave asked Fahrenthold what he makes of Trump doing so many interviews for peoples’ books. What’s Trumps’ agenda?
“I think one thing — he loves to talk about himself,” Fahrenthold said. “I think Trump sees this as a way of shaping the historical narrative about him. This is how Trump was in the White House. Think about how many interviews he gave to journalists while he was in the White House.”
You can listen to Dave Ross’ full interview with Fahrenthold here:
Pulitzer Prize winning reporter David Fahrenthold joins KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross every Tuesday on Seattle’s Morning News. Listen to Seattle’s Morning News weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
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Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
