Jen Psaki and Others Drag Washington Post for Ghoulish Suggestion Biden is Some Kind of Time-Wasting Grief-Addicted Funeral Junkie

By Tommy ChristopherJan 8th, 2022, 1:46 pm
 
WILMINGTON, DE - SEPTEMBER 13: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden arrives at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church for his granddaughter Natalie Biden's confirmation Mass on September 13, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden's oldest son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who died of cancer in 2015; and Biden's first wife Neilia Biden and their daughter Naomi, who died in an automobile accident in 1972, are all buried in the church's cemetery. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The Washington Post got kicked all over Twitter — including by Jen Psaki — over a weird post suggesting President Joe Biden is some kind of grief addict who’s getting bashed for spending too much time at funerals, or something.

On Friday night, the Post published an article by Annie Linskey — who once tweeted a photo of Biden visiting his family’s graves with the caption “Biden goes to church and walks through a graveyard in Wilmington as his legislative agenda is dying in Washington” — entitled “Biden, funerals and a bygone America.”

It was a deeply weird deep dive into Biden’s funeral habits that was pegged to his attendance at former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s funeral this weekend. The substance of the article is that Mr. Biden demonstrates deep care for grieving friends and colleagues, but it frames those qualities as alien, and lightly implies there’s a downside to them.

“If a president’s most valuable resource is his time, this one has made a particular point of setting aside hours to grieve, console and mark the friendships he’s built over his roughly half-century in public office,” Linskey writes, after tallying some of the many hours Biden has spent on the departed — “All while running the country.”

Linskey also wrote this weird line framing grief as a contest between the president and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden: “Biden’s ability to stretch his schedule to accommodate the events at times surpasses his wife’s. ”

The article is merely strange, straining at a point that it doesn’t quite have the stomach to make because the alternative would be to simply report that Biden is a deeply empathetic and considerate man.

But the Post’s Twitter account put a finer point on it, tweeting “Biden, who heads to Sen. Harry M. Reid’s memorial Saturday — his seventh as president — uses funerals to honor his friendships and make a point about bipartisanship.”

They added “Not everyone thinks it’s the best use of his time.”

Not a single quote in the article suggests this, a fact for which the Post was rightly excoriated by media figures and other Twitter users — including White Houe Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

“I will wait here for the apparent growing chorus referenced here who are opposed (that is right opposed according to this tweet) to a @POTUS who honors the lives of those lost, with empathy and grace,” Psaki wrote.

Others joined in, including a few journalists trying to defend the article while denouncing the tweet:

As of this writing, the tweet is still up.

Washington post funeral tweet 1-8-2022

Update: They deleted it with this notation:

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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