AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Jen Psaki, who used to work as White House Press Secretary under President Joe Biden before joining MSNBC, has released a new book, and one story is getting a lot of attention.
Back in 2021, during a ceremony honoring soldiers killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden was criticized for checking his watch three times. However, it was proven that the president checked it while the ceremony was still going on, despite administration officials claiming otherwise.
In her book, Say More, Psaki mentioned the event and said that “the president looked at his watch only after the ceremony had ended. Moments later, he and the First Lady headed toward their car.” Psaki also highlighted that Biden’s critics used the image to make the president seem “insensitive, concerned only about how much time had passed.”
On Monday, Axios pointed this out regarding her inaccurate memory:
Psaki’s new account is at odds with fact-checks at the time, news agencies’ photos from the ceremony at Dover Air Force Base, and on-the-record statements from Gold Star families who were there.
The Associated Press photographer on the tarmac snapped two photos of Biden looking at his watch twice and 10 minutes apart, as fact-checkers at USA Today and Snopes noted soon afterward.
Psaki also mistakenly cited a passage from The Washington Post to bolster her account.
The sentences she quoted were from USA Today’s fact-check article — not the Post.
That article noted Biden looked at his watch at the end of the dignified transfer of the troops’ bodies, but also concluded that “photos and video show [Biden] also checked his watch during the ceremony.”
The image of Biden checking his watch during the dignified transfer of the fallen soldiers became a focal point of criticism by Biden’s critics on the right as well as the families of the soldiers.
After initially not giving Axios a response, Psaki later told them that “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,” adding: “The story on Afghanistan is really about the importance of delivering feedback even when it is difficult 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.”
