Fox News co-host Kayleigh McEnany knocked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki for avoiding the press as the Biden administration comes under fire over its disastrous exit from Afghanistan.
“Jen Psaki promised us a daily White House press briefing,” said McEnany, who served as White House Press Secretary under former President Donald Trump. “There isn’t one today. There wasn’t one Monday.”
“When the going gets tough, the daily press briefing that she promised goes out the window,” McEnany ripped Psaki.
Fox News reported Monday that Psaki was “out of the office” for the week:
Fox News sent questions to Psaki’s White House email address Sunday morning and received an auto-reply. Hours later, on Sunday evening, Fox News attempted once again to reach the White House spokeswoman. The same auto-reply, stating that the voice of the White House would not be available for the next week, was sent.
“I will be out of the office from August 15th-August 22nd,” the message said. Reporters were directed to reach out to other press officers, instead.
In addition to Psaki’s lack of transparency, Americans were offered a Pentagon press briefing that offered few answers, McEnany continued, according to Fox News: “And still, she said, Press Secretary John Kirby couldn’t answer some of the most pressing questions. When asked how many American citizens were trapped in Afghanistan, Kirby admitted, ‘I don’t know.’”
“And I don’t know how many Americans are in Afghanistan,” Kirby said Wednesday. “That’s a question put to the State Department, not the Department of Defense. We don’t have that kind of granularity.” The secretary offered his “best guess” of somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 Americans near Kabul.
“When you are a press secretary at any entity, you anticipate whatever the questions will be,” McEnany said. “One of the most obvious questions is how many Americans are on the ground. He didn’t take up the time to pick up the phone and call Secretary of State Antony Blinken and get that number for us when you are the one place we are getting information from today, when there are nearly 15,000 American hostages on the ground?”
“And the Pentagon spokesperson could not pick up the phone and Jen Psaki won’t go to the podium to give us these very basic answers we deserve.”
Notably, President Joe Biden bolted for vacation in Wilmington, Delaware, last week, just days after returning from another vacation. As the Taliban quickly took over in Afghanistan and thousands of Americans remained stranded, Biden’s team released a photo of POTUS at Camp David. He briefly returned to give an address to the American people but refused to take a single question from reporters.
Soon after Biden’s address, clips of Biden’s ABC News interview with Democrat ally George Stephanopoulos were widely panned as incoherent, if not lacking honesty.
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