Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki edited her new book that falsely claimed President Joe Biden never checked his watch during a ceremony for soldiers killed during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
The Daily Mail reported on Thursday that Psaki, who is now a host on MSNBC, had cut 150 words from “Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World” after Axios first revealed two weeks ago that she had rewritten history and would be making a fix.
On X, reporter Charlie Spiering posted a side-by-side text comparison. “According to the new version, Gold Star military families were just upset that he talked about Beau,” he said, referring to Biden’s eldest son who died of brain cancer at the age of 46 in 2015.
Jen Psaki’s book is now edited – and she has taken out all mentions of President Biden looking at his watch during the dignified transfer ceremony entirely.
According to the new version, Gold Star military families were just upset that he talked about Beau. pic.twitter.com/RxHrhUp5Ei
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) May 30, 2024
In the original print of the book, which was first published on May 7, Psaki wrote 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 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.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
“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.
In a statement responding to the report from Axios, Psaki said 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.”
A press representative for her publisher, Scribner, told the New York Post that the text “will be corrected in the e-book and future printings, due to inaccuracies as originally written.”
Several members of Gold Star families of the 13 service members killed in the Kabul airport attack also signed onto a statement responding to Psaki’s original version of events in the book.
“We watched in horror as President Biden looked at his wristwatch on multiple occasions during the dignified transfer of our children in Dover,” they said in a statement reported by the Daily Mail.
Psaki served as Biden’s White House press secretary from the beginning of his administration on January 20, 2021, to May 13, 2022. She then got hired by MSNBC. During her time as a cable TV host, Psaki has continued to defend Biden while disparaging former President Donald Trump and the Republican lawmakers who back him.
Last week, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) suggested Psaki could face a subpoena if she does not stop dodging an interview for an investigation into the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021 while alluding to her book.
“It is troubling that Ms. Psaki seeks to profit off the Afghanistan tragedy, and has felt comfortable writing accounts and making them available to the general public, but refuses to make herself available to Congress, the branch dedicated to representing the interest and will of the American people,” McCaul wrote to Psaki’s lawyer.
