OAN’s Brooke Mallory
4:40 PM – Monday, May 13, 2024
Jen Psaki, a host for MSNBC and the former White House press secretary for President Joe Biden, said that she will retract a paragraph from her new book that describes Biden checking his watch at a memorial service for U.S. soldiers who lost their lives during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Biden “looked at his watch only after the ceremony had ended,” according to Psaki, in the novel Say More.
“Moments later, he and the First Lady headed toward their car,” she continued.
Psaki said that the president’s detractors had pointed out that he repeatedly glanced at his watch to give the impression of “appear[ing] insensitive, concerned only about how much time had passed.”
However, her statement was “at odds with fact-checks at the time,” according to a Monday Axios article that cited stories from fact-checkers USA Today and Snopes, as well as firsthand accounts from photographers and Gold Star families present at the event.
Psaki later assured that the “detail in a few lines of the book about the exact number of times he looked at his watch will be removed in future reprints and the ebook.”
“The story on Afghanistan is really about the importance of delivering feedback, even when it is difficult, as told through my own experience of telling President Biden that his own story of loss was not well received by the families who were grieving their sons and daughters,” she said.
Biden has frequently come under fire for how he handled the chaotic U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.
In 2022, Psaki departed from Biden’s White House to become a political pundit and anchor on MSNBC.
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