Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki asserted Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration should not ‘treat everyone like they are stupid” after spending her tenure claiming former President Joe Biden was mentally healthy.
Psaki told “Morning Joe” panelists that the administration is gaslighting the American people as if they are “morons” when it comes to the leaked Signal messages detailing a planned attack on the Houthis in Yemen. National Security adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently added The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, where he has since published screenshots of internal discussions about the military’s planned attack, which was carried out on March 15.
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“Look, there’s a basic rule of politics that usually is true, don’t treat everybody like they’re stupid and like they’re complete morons out there,” Psaki said. “And right now what we’ve seen, Jeffrey Goldberg obviously put out all the details on Monday, then he put out the details that included the times, the weapons, specificity. It doesn’t matter what it’s called, the game of semantics is absurd here. Anybody could’ve read that piece and seen these are details that shouldn’t be in a sensitive group chat.”
WATCH:
During her time as Biden’s press secretary, Psaki attempted to convince the public that the then-president was in grand shape after concerns about his mental capacity had arisen. Biden had stumbled and had fallen up the stairs of Air Force One multiple times in March 2021, which raised eyebrows among the American public.
Psaki dodged a reporter’s question on whether Biden saw a doctor after his falls during a March 2021 briefing, stating that he stumbled because of the “tricky steps.” In May 2021, Psaki told reporters that Biden was so healthy that it was hard to keep up with the president.
“I can tell you, having traveled with him a fair amount, sometimes he’s hard to keep up with,” Psaki told a reporter who asked about the president’s workout routine.
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Biden underwent a procedure in November 2021 to remove a “benign-appearing polyp” found during a colonoscopy, prompting former Vice President Kamala Harris to briefly serve as acting president. Psaki asserted during a Nov. 19, 2021, briefing that conspiracy theorists were to blame for the public’s concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health.
“Jen, in the wake of the President’s physical and on the topic of his health, a new Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 50 percent of voters surveyed did not agree with the statement that ‘President Biden is in good health,’ and that voters are almost evenly split on the question of if he is in ‘good mental health,’” a reporter asked. “I understand that the President disagrees with this assessment, the White House disagrees with this assessment. But I’m curious: Where do you think these voters’ concerns are coming from?”
“I can’t speak to the assessments of voters. There [is] certainly quite a bit of conspiracy theory pushing out there on a range of social media platforms and even through the mouths of elected officials. So, that could certainly be a root cause, as you know,” Psaki replied.
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Besides his health, Psaki further defended Biden following the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 service members dead in August 2021. She told Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy in August 2021 that it is “irresponsible” to say American citizens were “stranded” in Afghanistan, and claimed that no one in the world could have ever predicted that the Taliban would retake Afghanistan once U.S. troops exited the country.
The former press secretary said in May 2024 that Biden did not check his watch while he attended a ceremony honoring the soldiers who had died, though images and videos captured the former president doing just that.
Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July 2024 after a disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump sparked widespread concerns among Democrats and the American public about Biden’s health.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
