MSNBC host and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted in a new interview that she never saw signs that former President Joe Biden had declined while she worked for him.
“I never saw that person —not a single time, and I was in the Oval Office every day, that was on that debate stage,” Psaki said on the “Mixed Signals” podcast about Biden’s performance during the June 2024 presidential debate which raised alarms about his fitness to serve another term. He dropped out the following month and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee.
“I’m not a doctor. Aging happens quite quickly,” Psaki added on the Semafor podcast that was published Friday.
The former Biden aide, who left the White House in May 2022, said she hadn’t seen him in person in the two-and-a-half years afterward leading up to the November election.
But she warned against people using the term “cover-up” to describe how the White House responded to questions about the president’s age during that time.
“‘Cover-up’ is a very loaded term,” Psaki said, adding that people typically use that expression when talking about a crime.
“People use that term as related to Watergate. Or the covering up of not sharing public information about a war,” she continued. “I think it’s a bit of a dangerous term.”
Psaki was also hesitant to criticize the media when asked if the press should’ve been “more aggressive” in covering the “pretty big story” about the president’s health.
“Maybe the media missed a lot,” she said, while arguing that it was easier to be critical of press coverage in retrospect. “There were major stories and moments missed.”
Axios reporter Alex Thompson used a speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday to say the assembled media “should have done better” at covering Biden’s decline.
Psaki suggested one reason there may have been a reluctance to report on these concerns.
“While we know there were problematic things behind-the-scenes now in 2023 and 2024, there was an aggressive all-out pitching operation from the right-wing and from the Republicans about Joe Biden’s age and how he was in decline….the majority of which wasn’t true, in 2019-2022,” Psaki claimed.
That effort by the right “worked,” she said.
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Psaki lamented that Biden’s legacy would be tainted by how the 2024 race played out and brought questions about his fitness to the forefront. Her successor as press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, routinely dismissed questions about Biden’s age and criticized videos of him appearing confused as “cheap fakes.”
Psaki is set to take on a more prominent role at MSNBC, getting the coveted 9 p.m. ET slot Tuesdays through Fridays beginning next week on a program called “The Briefing.” Top-rated MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who had been hosting five nights a week at 9 p.m. during the first 100 days of the Trump administration, will return to only broadcasting on Monday nights.
Psaki’s comments follow the release of several bombshell books giving an insider look at the 2024 presidential race.
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In author Chris Whipple’s book, “Uncharted,” he argued that Biden’s inner circle “convinced themselves in spite of the evidence” that Biden was capable of serving another term.
