MSNBC’s struggling new prime time host, Jen Psaki, can’t seem to catch a break these days, as a high-profile new book about the “cover-up” of President Biden’s cognitive decline has put her on the defensive, just as she’s launching her new program, “The Briefing.” 

The former Biden press secretary — whose 9 p.m. EDT, Tuesday through Friday show had its premiere last week — is being hammered for what her detractors say are falsehoods she’s made about Mr. Biden’s mental acuity and what she saw during her time in the West Wing.

A former Trump White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, ripped into Ms. Psaki during Wednesday morning’s  episode of “The Morning Meeting” podcast, while the program’s co-hosts were discussing the  forthcoming book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson. The book says that Mr. Biden’s advisers developed serious concerns about his condition in 2022, when Ms. Psaki was still serving in her press secretary role. 

In promotional interviews for “The Briefing,” Ms. Psaki denied witnessing any issues with Mr. Biden’s mental acuity and cognition. But while sympathetic interviewers failed to push back, many viewers weren’t buying it.  Mr. Spicer slammed the media for seeming to give a “pass” to Ms. Psaki for “lying” about the 46th president during her time as press secretary.

“As a guy who was skewered for comments — some personally inflicted, which I’ll admit — to sit back and have clips equally out there of Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre talking about the prowess of that individual. … If you want to critique the way I did my job and some of the statements I made, that’s fine, it’s a free country,” Mr. Spicer said. “But to give Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre a pass for blatantly lying about the president’s fitness for office, then you have your priorities mixed up.”

Mr. Spicer’s co-host, the journalist Mark Halperin, chimed in to note that Ms. Psaki and Ms. Jean-Pierre both suggested that they had a hard time keeping up with the president, who is roughly four decades older than they are. 

Ms. Psaki, who served as Mr. Biden’s press secretary until mid-2022, was criticized for recently telling Semafor that she “never saw” the version of Mr. Biden that unsettled viewers during his disastrous June 27 debate with President Trump while she was in the White House, even though she said she claims to have been in the Oval Office “every day” between 2021 and 2022. She also suggested that “aging happens quite quickly,” and that his apparent deterioration could have happened later. 

According to “Original Sin,” in 2023 and 2024 Mr. Biden’s advisers discussed whether he would need a wheelchair if he won re-election. Another portion of the book says that as early as 2022, Mr. Biden’s aides were concerned about his ability to deliver a two-minute video address without verbal stumbles, and that White House staff started using two different cameras in an attempt to cover up the editing. At the time, observers noticed what seemed to be an unusual number of cuts in short videos of Mr. Biden speaking and speculated that the edits were being made to cover up verbal slip-ups. 

Unfortunately for Ms. Psaki, the questions about what she knew of Mr. Biden’s condition have coincided with the launch of her new show, for which MSNBC executives likely have high expectations. 

Ms. Psaki’s show launched on May 6 as the liberal network’s highest-rated anchor, Rachel Maddow, returned to her one-day-a-week schedule while reportedly earning $25 million a year after roughly three months working a normally five-day-a-week schedule to cover Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office. Ms. Maddow’s agreement to work five days a week during Mr. Trump’s first 100 days was a much-needed shot in the arm for MSNBC, which saw its ratings plunge by 57 percent after the 2024 election. Ms. Maddow’s temporary, five-days-a-week schedule seems to have helped bring back some viewers. Hers was the only cable show not produced by Fox News to make it onto the list of top 15 cable shows during the first three months of 2025.

But Ms. Maddow, much to the disappointment of her fans, held to her plans to return to working only one day a week as soon as the 100 days had ended. To fill her shoes on Tuesdays through Fridays in the coveted 9 p.m. EDT hour, the network turned to Ms. Psaki, who had been working weekends. 

During her last full week of work at the end of April, Ms. Maddow saw days where she drew in more than 2 million total viewers. However, Ms. Psaki’s show has seen lackluster ratings, even during its first week, when curious viewers will check out a new show.

On Tuesday, the first day of her new show, just 1.2 million viewers tuned in, a number that then dropped to just a hair over 1 million the next day. Ms. Psaki’s viewership in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic also cratered by 53 percent to just 65,000, roughly 40 percent of Ms. Maddow’s demo audience.

And on Friday, Ms. Psaki’s show also drew in just more than 1 million viewers. Her audience in the 25- to 54-year-old demo stayed relatively stable at 66,000. 

For her first week overall, the former press secretary’s audience was, on average, 47 percent lower than Ms. Maddow’s total viewership and in the demo. 

Nobody expected Ms. Psaki to maintain Ms. Maddow’s viewership levels. But network executives will be closely watching if her ratings trail below those of Alex Wagner, the woman Ms. Psaki replaced. Ms. Wagner had held down Tuesdays through Fridays at 9 p.m. EDT during Ms. Maddow’s previous one-day-a-week tour. In March, it was announced she was being demoted to “correspondent” to make way for Ms. Psaki. Upon the announcement, Ms. Maddow said on the air that she was bothered that anchors of color had been displaced. Ms. Wagner is biracial.

The key comparison will be between Ms. Psaki’s ratings and the ratings Ms. Wagner had after the 2024 election, when MSNBC’s ratings went off a cliff. 

Without an uptick in viewership, Ms. Psaki’s show may force MSNBC executives to make future cuts or examine whether it is worth paying Ms. Maddow $25 million a year for one day of work a week while its ratings are down and the network is being spun off into its own company — thus losing any kind of financial buffer from NBCUniversal. While MSNBC is likely on the hook to Ms. Maddow for the money for another three to five years, it could write her a large check and cut its losses, much as NBC did with Megyn Kelly, and stop paying the collateral costs that come with Ms. Maddow’s employment, such as her retinue of well-paid producers.

MSNBC did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.