As we reported yesterday, President Joe Biden gave a self-serving speech Thursday afternoon on what was a very dark day for America and her allies in Afghanistan after suicide bombings left, at last count, 13 members of the U.S. military and 79 Afghans dead, and scores more injured.
He made excuses for terrible decisions there were no good excuses for, proclaimed he took responsibility for said decisions while turning right back around and attempting to blame former President Trump for the fiasco that has unfolded at a staggeringly rapid pace in the country that our armed forces were in for nearly 20 years.
And when it was time for him to take questions from the White House press corps (a rarity for him), Biden revealed he had a list of reporters who he was “instructed” to call upon.
But while the Biden press conference was predictably bad, things got even worse not long after when press secretary Jen Psaki took to the podium to take questions, many (if not all) which were about Afghanistan.
At one point during the briefing, Psaki was asked about how Biden was feeling and what kind of “mood” he was in as new information continued to roll in throughout the day about the Afghanistan attacks.
Psaki’s response which, remember, came a very short time after Biden wasn’t able to give any reassurances on if things were going to get better in Afghanistan, was to suggest that there could actually be worse days ahead in Biden’s presidency.
Here’s the exchange between the reporter and Psaki in context (bolded emphasis added):
Reporter: “Just to clarify, since you said you were with him, how was he? How was his mood? How was he in dealing with all these — with the incoming information? How was he in asking the questions of military commanders (inaudible)?”
Psaki: “Well, I would say that anyone who’s watched the President up close, which is most of you, knows that the — putting the lives of servicemen and women at risk, and those decisions that you have to make as Commander-in-Chief, weigh heavily on him. And as I noted a few minutes ago, any day where you lose servicemembers is — may be the worst day of your presidency, and hopefully there’s not more. But we are certainly early in the presidency at this point in time.“
Watch a shortened version of her remarks below:
I went back to this, figuring I might have heard wrong.
Nope, just leaving door open for things to get worse. https://t.co/H0K1Muk5s2 pic.twitter.com/RDITu7HWgW
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) August 27, 2021
My guess is that Psaki probably meant to say something more optimistic like there would be better days ahead, but that’s not what came out, and the end result may be one of the worst quotes of her time as Biden’s press secretary at the lowest point in his presidency to date.
In her defense, maybe there was a reason behind what she said:
Jen Psaki is watching this and drinking tequila straight from the bottle before her press briefing.
— God’s Favorite Brodigan (@brodigan) August 26, 2021
I mean, could you blame her? If I had to be a spokesperson for Joe Biden, it’s very likely that I, too, would say the quiet part out loud on occasion.
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