Biden was silenced by criticism from families of troops killed in Kabul, book says. ‘Sir, are you still there?’

Joe Biden attends the dignified transfer of remains of fallen service members at Dover air force base in Delaware on 29 August 2021. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Joe Biden was stunned into silence when he was told families of US service members killed in Kabul in August 2021 said that when the bodies were returned and the president met grieving relatives, he spent too much time talking about the death of his own son, Beau.

“I paused for the president to respond,” Jen Psaki, then White House press secretary, writes in a new book.