Jen Psaki deflects blame for missing signs of Joe Biden's cognitive decline: 'I'm not a doctor'
WASHINGTON, DC: Jen Psaki wants everyone to believe she had no idea former President Joe Biden’s mental health was in freefall until he faceplanted on live TV during last summer’s presidential debate.
During her appearance on Semafor’s 'Mixed Signals' podcast, the former White House press secretary-turned-MSNBC talking head said, “I never saw the person on that debate stage. I was in the Oval Office every day … I’m not a doctor. Aging happens quickly.”
Despite standing next to Biden nearly every day for over a year between 2021 and 2022 — briefing the press, pushing narratives, and swatting down questions about his age — Psaki now claims she was blindsided.
Jen Psaki thinks 'cover-up' is a 'loaded and dangerous term'
Jen Psaki tried to do some cleanup in real time. When the discussion turned to whether there had been a cover-up, she got all squirmy.
“Cover-up is a very loaded term,” she said defensively. “People use that term as related to Watergate or the covering up of not sharing public information about a war… I think it’s a bit of a dangerous term.”
Her comments raised eyebrows, especially since Biden’s stumbles were public knowledge. Tripping up the Air Force One stairs (multiple times), forgetting names, looking dazed mid-sentence, and adopting a stiff, uncertain gait that was unmistakable.
Meanwhile, the White House kept brushing off all concerns like they were dealing with a cold, not cognitive decline.
But Psaki now claims that she only put two and two together during the debate fiasco on June 27. “This is a f***ing disaster,” she recalled saying to colleagues that night.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump's presidential debate changed everything
Joe Biden didn’t just fumble that night against future President Donald Trump — he mumbled, lost his train of thought, and seemed to have no idea about the topics at hand.
As The Daily Beast put it, his performance felt like “an embarrassing trip to the nursing home.”
It didn’t take long for the fallout to hit. Within weeks, Biden dropped out of the race and threw his support behind former Vice President Kamala Harris. But as we all know, Harris got absolutely steamrolled by Trump in November.
However, the media, the public, and lawmakers are still wrestling with who knew what, and when. Many are now convinced the signs of Biden’s decline were glaringly obvious and that those close to him — including Psaki — were complicit in pretending everything was fine.
Psaki herself offered a little mea culpa. “Maybe the media missed a lot. In retrospect, there were probably major stories missed,” she conceded, but then she deflected blame: "It’s always easy to play Monday-morning quarterback.”
Media backlash over 'cover-up' of Joe Biden's cognitive decline and the book that could blow it all up
The media’s role in this whole saga resulted in a major pushback — even in the form of friendly fire at the usually glitzy and self-congratulatory White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Alex Thompson, Axios reporter and co-author of an upcoming book on Biden’s decline, didn’t pull any punches during his Aldo Beckman Award speech.
“President Biden’s decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception,” he said. “We — myself included — missed a lot of this story. Some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.”
Thompson’s co-author, CNN’s Jake Tapper, has also been poking holes in the official story. Their upcoming book, 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again', is already being hyped as a behind-the-scenes bombshell, promising to dig deep into exactly what went down in the West Wing.
Early leaks suggest that concerns about Biden’s memory and stamina were raised, but got swept aside by senior staff and campaign strategists in a desperate bid to keep the ship looking steady.
But as we now know, the iceberg had already been hit.
