Jen Psaki spent a recent episode of her MS NOW show “The Briefing” reviewing what she called one of Trump’s most embarrassing periods as president, before warning that the ridicule could obscure a deeper danger. The former White House press secretary examined several damaging developments for Trump — a courtroom loss, multiple errors at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey — and concluded by speculating about how a president under pressure might respond.
A Week of Stumbles on the World Stage
Psaki began by noting a judge’s decision that Trump must compensate E. Jean Carroll $5.8 million following findings of sexual abuse and defamation, along with the failure of the administration’s Iran peace agreement — two major blows in rapid succession. But she made clear those were merely the opening acts.
The centerpiece of her critique was Trump’s performance at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, which began on July 7, 2026. Footage from the tarmac showed Trump wandering without clear direction until Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stepped in, physically took Trump by the arm, and guided him to the correct position. Psaki described the moment plainly on air, letting the visual speak for itself before moving on to an even longer list of missteps.
She then aired a compilation of additional gaffes from the summit, including Trump referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin,” and appearing to call Iran the “Islamic Republic of Japan.” Psaki quipped that she hoped someone was checking whether Trump had inadvertently endangered Japan’s diplomatic standing. Trump’s July 8, 2026 news conference in Ankara provided additional material for the segment.
The Montage and Its Sobering Aftermath
After presenting the compilation, Psaki offered a more serious assessment. She observed that judges, foreign leaders, and even European soccer players had all reacted to Trump with what amounted to dismissal. But focusing only on his missteps, she warned, risked overlooking more serious implications.
“But it doesn’t mean we can entirely dismiss him,” Psaki said. “Because when this president gets embarrassed, when he feels cornered, that is when he’s most likely to try and cling to power.”
That warning was not abstract. Psaki pointed directly to a concrete example: within the previous 24 hours, the Trump administration had threatened to withhold $1 billion in counterterrorism funds from states that refused to overhaul their election practices. The move, she argued, illustrated exactly the kind of pressure the administration applies when it feels politically squeezed — using federal dollars as a lever to reshape how states conduct their voting systems.
The Danger Behind the Embarrassment
Psaki framed the funding threat not as an isolated policy dispute but as part of a pattern. She argued that the more publicly humiliated Trump becomes, the more aggressive the administration’s reach tends to grow. The counterterrorism funds gambit, she said, was a direct reflection of that dynamic — an attempt to tighten the administration’s grip on election infrastructure at a moment when Trump was absorbing a cascade of bad headlines.
Her broader argument was that the very qualities that make Trump easy to mock — the gaffes, the confusion on the world stage, the awkward moments with foreign leaders — are also the qualities that fuel some of his most consequential decisions. Embarrassment, in her read, does not defuse him. It accelerates him.
The episode was covered by HuffPost senior reporter Elyse Wanshel and drew attention for the unusual structure of Psaki’s presentation: a host willingly constructing the sharpest possible roast of a sitting president, then using that roast as the setup for a genuine alarm. The implicit message was that audiences who stay only for the comedy are missing the sharper edge beneath it.
Trump’s peace deal with Iran fell through during the same week the NATO summit produced its string of viral moments, compounding what Psaki characterized as an unusually damaging stretch. The Carroll judgment, the diplomatic stumbles, the tarmac moment with Erdoğan, the geographic mix-up involving Iran and Japan, and the election-funding ultimatum all landed within days of each other — a convergence that gave Psaki substantial material but also, in her telling, substantial reason for concern. As she put it on her program, the president is simultaneously at his most ridiculed and, by her assessment, his most unpredictable.
Sources:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jen-psaki-trump-gaffes_n_6a4fe7ffe4b05729697f7ded
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/jen-psaki-warns-laughing-trump-230809206.html
https://www.aol.com/articles/jen-psaki-warns-laughing-trump-230809000.html
