Jen Psaki tweets about NFL games after recommending Dems deal with failed voting-rights bill by blowing off steam for a weekend
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- Jen Psaki told Dems to take the weekend to de-stress after the failure of the voting rights bill.
- Her comments went viral, with campaigners suggesting they misread the magnitude of the defeat.
- An apparent sign of this was her Twitter commentary about Saturday's Cincinnati Bengals game.
After telling Democrats to take the weekend off and de-stress, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki seemed to follow her own advice, sending posts about the weekend's NFL playoff games.
In an interview Friday with ABC News, Psaki addressed the failure of Democrats to pass a bill voting-rights, which failed to pass the Senate because of a GOP filibuster.
"My advice to everyone out there who's frustrated, sad, angry, pissed off: feel those emotions, go to a kickboxing class, have a margarita, do whatever you need to do this weekend and then wake up on Monday morning, we gotta keep fighting," Psaki told ABC.
—The Recount (@therecount) January 21, 2022
The comments attracted criticism from some who suggested it trivialized the scale and consequences of the defeat.
"Miss voting? Try happy hour!" quipped comedian Lisa Curry.
In tweets over the weekend, Psaki steered clear of politics, instead focussing on the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, and particularly the game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Tennessee Titans on Saturday.
The game, which the Bengals won 19-16 thanks to a late field goal, earned them a place in their first AFC Championship game since the 1988 season.
—Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) January 24, 2022
"This is stressful @Bengals," Psaki, a Bengals fan, wrote Saturday.
On Sunday, during the game that would determine who faced the Bengals in the next round, she wrote: "Thinking of a lot of @BuffaloBills fans and @Chiefs fans breathing into a paper bag right now."
The Chiefs ended up winning, and will now play the Bengals on January 30 in the AFC Championship. The winner of that game will play in the Super Bowl against either the San Francisco 49ers or the Los Angeles Rams.
Psaki commented on the Bengals in her White House briefing Friday, boosting them ahead of their playoffs game.
"One last thing, the Bengals are playing tomorrow. I'm just giving it a shout-out so that my husband will be excited at home. They haven't won a playoff game in 31 years," she said.
Her husband, Greg Melcher, is from Cincinnati.