Well, her job as White House press secretary is, after all, to function as a spokesperson for the president — which in essence is what she is doing here. When asked for Joe Biden’s response to the drone strike that mistakenly killed ten civilians, seven of them children, last month, mouthpiece Jen Psaki faithfully repeated what Biden would have doubtless said had the question been asked of him directly — and if he had the cojones to answer questions. (RELATED: Awaiting Biden’s statement on drone strike that killed not ISIS-K planners but civilian family)
Psaki, that is, seemed in her answer to invoke Biden’s loss of his own immediate family members. Here was her reply:
[A]s a human being, as a president, as somebody who has overseen loss in a variety of scenarios, both as a leader and personally, it is his reaction is it’s a tragedy and every loss is a tragedy, and he supports the efforts to, the effort to move this forward as quickly as possible and to have a thorough investigation.
Psaki invokes Biden's dead son & daughter as proof he emphasizes w/the families of the Afghans that the U.S. government accidentally droned to death: "As a human being, as a President,. as somebody who has overseen loss…as a leader & personally, his reaction is it's a tragedy" pic.twitter.com/Co3N32s0yY
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 20, 2021
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Biden, as has been well documented, lost his first wife and daughter in a traffic accident many years ago, and, more recently, his son Beau to brain cancer.
But it’s the last of these premature deaths especially that he mentions tediously often. His most recent — and one of his most inappropriate mention of Beau — came during his meeting with the families of the 13 Marines who were killed last month in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. One of the parents was incensed by the intrusion into his grief. As the Washington Post summarized the confrontation at the time:
Schmitz did not want to hear about Beau, he wanted to talk about [his own son] Jared. Eventually, the parents took out a photo to show to Biden. “I said, ‘Don’t you ever forget that name. Don’t you ever forget that face. Don’t you ever forget the names of the other 12,’” Schmitz said. “ ‘And take some time to learn their stories.’”
