Psaki to remove lines about Biden at ceremony for fallen soldiers from new book

Former White House press secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki says she will remove a passage from her new book about President Biden looking at his watch during a ceremony for soldiers killed during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In “Say More,” Pskai wrote that Biden “looked at his watch only after the ceremony had ended. Moments later, he and the First Lady headed toward their car.”

She added critics of the president noted he looked at his watch multiple times in an effort to make “him appear insensitive, concerned only about how much time had passed.”

Axios reported on Monday that Psaki’s account was “at odds with fact-checks at the time,” pointing to accounts from photographers on the ground, Gold Star families in attendance and fact-checks from USA Today and Snopes.

In a statement to the outlet, Pskai 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.”

“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,” she added.

Critics of the president, including former President Trump, have routinely slammed Biden over his handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Psaki left Biden’s White House in 2022 and joined MSNBC as a leading host and political analyst on the network.