Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki says she didn’t see evidence of a “cover-up” of former President Biden’s mental acuity in the lead-up to the 2024 election, and she doesn’t believe her former colleagues would have participated in one.
Psaki, who served as Biden’s press secretary from 2021 to 2022 and is now a host on MSNBC, recently joined Semafor’s “Mixed Signals” podcast, where Ben Smith asked if the White House or media “covered this up,” in reference to Biden’s mental abilities.
“I think cover-up is such a loaded phrase. But … I left in May of 2022, just for the facts here, and I have seen Biden once since then, when I took my daughter to the holiday party this last December, after he had lost, and so I hadn’t seen him in person during that period of time,” Psaki said.
“I never saw that person, not a single time — and I was in the Oval Office every day — that was on that debate stage,” she continued, referring to Biden’s disastrous debate with President Trump in June. “I’m not a doctor. Aging happens quite quickly.”
Smith pressed Psaki, asking if she ever heard from former colleagues about whether they in fact covered up his mental state or if they were in a sense of denial about Biden’s mental fitness.
Psaki again said she believes the term “cover-up” is loaded.
“Cover-up is often like a crime, right? When people use that, they say it’s worse than the crime. People use that term as they relate to Watergate or the covering up or not sharing public information about a war,” Psaki said.
“I think it’s a bit of a dangerous term. I don’t know,” she said about what happened within the Biden administration. “I have not talked to them, any of the people in these books about this particular question.”
Psaki noted that a lot of people mentioned in various books being released about the 2024 election and Biden’s team are “good human beings.”
“I like to think that, no, they would not be part of an active ‘let’s hide from the public what we see happening privately,’ and I don’t know the facts of what was happening,” she said.
Multiple reports of Biden’s declining mental health have followed his sole debate with Trump last year, the fallout from which led to him leaving the race. When and to what extend the former president truly diminished have been subjects of heated discussion.
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