Psaki says Harris faces more criticism because she is a woman and woman of color

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday didn’t hesitate to say “yes” when asked whether Vice President Kamala Harris was receiving more criticism because she is the first woman and woman of color to hold the office.

“I think there’s no question that the type of attacks — the attacks on her that certainly, being the first she is many times over, is part of that,” Psaki said in an interview with POLITICO’s senior editor for standards and ethics, Anita Kumar, as part of its inaugural Women Rule Exchange.

Harris has received unflattering coverage in recent months and weeks, with a CNN story over the weekend reporting that the vice president is “struggling with a rocky relationship with some parts of the White House,” and that there’s “entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus” in her office. There was negative press during her third foreign trip, to Paris, with a Los Angeles Times column over the weekend calling her “the incredible disappearing vice president” — criticizing her absence from Washington as Congress passed the administration's infrastructure bill.

Psaki jumped to Harris’ defense on Twitter on Sunday, posting that the vice president is a “vital partner” to President Joe Biden, who has taken on “important challenges facing the country,” from voting rights to the crisis at the border.

“What I would note, though, and one of the things I really admire about the vice president: She is the first African American woman, woman of color, Indian American woman to serve in this job. Woman. I mean, so many firsts, right? It’s a lot to have on your shoulders,” Psaki said on Wednesday. “She is somebody who, at a much higher level than the rest of us, but who wants to be seen as the talented, experienced, you know, expert, substantive policy person, partner to the president, that she is. But I do think there have been some attacks that are beyond because of her identity.”

Psaki also talked with POLITICO about her tenure and the environment for women in the White House. She said she hadn’t decided whether she would hold on to her job as the administration’s top spokesperson past the one-year timeline she planned.

While the press secretary said she expected to leave the post sometime next year, she hasn’t determined whether it will be before or after next year’s midterm elections.

“I have two little kids, as you know, 3 and 6,” Psaki said. “I also think this is a job that’s the honor of a lifetime — working for this president at this moment in history — but I’m a believer in lifting people up and having new faces and new voices out there, and I think that’s an important part of my role too.”

She also joked about the 400 pieces of paper piled up on her desk she has to work through.

“I’m focused on every day here,” Psaki said.

The press secretary said in the spring that she intended to serve in the role for a year, before moving on to spend more time with her husband, Gregory Mecher, and their two children.

Psaki, who worked on the communications team in the Obama White House until 2011, also talked about how nervous she was when the White House chief of staff at the time, Denis McDonough, asked her to return to the White House as communications director during President Barack Obama’s second term. She was pregnant with her first child at the time.

“And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know if you know that I’m pregnant.’ He was like, ‘Well, that’s great. We’ll figure that out,’” Psaki said. “But I didn’t know other people to look to, who had had a senior job in the White House, who were pregnant. I didn’t know of anyone. Probably there were some, but I didn’t know of any at the time. And now I think it’s different.”

Psaki’s part of an all-women communications team, with six of them mothers of young kids. She said being parents is part of what they talk about on a daily basis.

“I hope if any of my team members decide to have kids that they’ll know we will be excited about it and we’ll figure it out,” she said. “And that is not a part of what should exclude anyone from being at the table or being in the room. That’s what you have to work around to have the talent you need. That has changed, and that I think is part of, you know, having so many women with little kids who have legitimate, real seats at the table.”