President Joe Biden will sign 10 executive orders Thursday to build on actions he took on his first day in office toward corralling the coronavirus pandemic and will include more specific steps about what the path forward will look like, but it will still take "months and months" to get the spiraling illness under control, new Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.
"I will be bringing Dr. (Anthony) Fauci to the briefing room today as part of our effort to be especially sure we're having public health experts, medical experts leading our communication about the process that is underway to get the pandemic under control," Psaki said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
But even with the immediate steps already being taken, "we're not going to be able to get out of the pandemic or get the pandemic under control overnight," Psaki said. "We want to also be clear in setting that expectation with the American public. So today he will spend the day talking about it. He will deliver some remarks to the public outlining more specifics on the vaccine plans, more specifics on restrictions that he will put in place to keep people healthy and safe. And we'll build from there. It's just the beginning."
Meanwhile, Psaki held her first press conference Wednesday night, after Biden's inauguration, and while the event did not feature any heated exchanges, she said Thursday she knows well that there are going to be days when the "press is going to come at me hard and ask me tough questions, and they won't be satisfied with what they hear."
It will, however, take some time to lower the temperature between the press and the press secretary after the often-contentious exchanges that occurred during the last administration, Psaki conceded.
"I have a tremendous responsibility with this opportunity, which is to lower the temperature myself," she said. "It takes two to really escalate, and even when there are days when we disagree or there are days when I'm not providing all the specific details that everybody would like to hear, my goal and objective is to maintain a calm tone in the briefing room."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.