Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki circled back when caught falsely claiming in a new book that President Joe Biden never checked his watch during a ceremony for soldiers killed during the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Axios reported Psaki, now a host on MSNBC, wrote in “Say More” that “the president looked at his watch only after the ceremony had ended. Moments later, he and the First Lady headed toward their car.”
She also claimed that Biden’s critics engaged in “misinformation” and used the image of Biden checking his watch to make “him appear insensitive, concerned only about how much time had passed.”
Psaki denied that Biden checked his watch despite photo evidence, media fact-checks, and statements made by Gold Star parents of a U.S. service member killed in the Kabul airport attack who were in attendance during the ceremony at Dover Air Force Base.
“I watched you disrespect us all 5 different times by checking your watch!!! What the f*** was so important that you had to keep looking at your watch????” said a Facebook post from Shana Chappell, mother of Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui.
Mark Schmitz, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, testified to Congress that “while I stood there on the tarmac watching you check your watch over and over again, all I wanted to do was shout out, ‘It’s two f***ing thirty, a**hole.'”
Psaki’s book also misattributed sentences taken from USA Today to The Washington Post to point out that Biden looked at his watch after the ceremony — even though the article said elsewhere that Biden checked his watch during the ceremony, too.
Axios received a statement from Psaki after its report was published, saying 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.”
Psaki insisted her story was “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.”
The book mishap drew blowback on social media.
“Jen Psaki lied in her book about an easily provable fact,” RealClearPolitics co-founder and president Tom Bevan said in a post to X.
In another post to X, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) said, “Calling Gold Star families liars — even when there’s photographic proof — is a pathetic partisan attempt to defend your boss and a bad look.”
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