Vice President JD Vance is working hard to whitewash what the Iran war is doing not only to civilians but to American troops, MS NOW's Jen Psaki said on Thursday's edition of "The Briefing."

Psaki, who served as White House press secretary before hosting the program, opened with a searing overview of Vance's defense of a recent U.S. strike that hit a wedding.

Addressing Vance's assertion that the U.S. is investigating the strike, Psaki pointed to a precedent: "Remember, the Trump administration had a similar line after a strike hit a girls' elementary school in Iran this February... while plenty of Western news outlets were methodical proving that the U.S. was in fact responsible, the administration just stuck its head in the sand."

The troops themselves, she said, found that "maddening," with the incident triggering a surge in conscientious objector claims. Psaki added that one person who helps service members file such claims reports that "unlike at other times in U.S. history, when conscientious objectors were typically junior service members, a lot of his clients today are people who have been in the military for more than a decade." Conscientious objector status is a long-standing legal pathway for service members who object to war on moral or religious grounds.

"Vance's lying here isn't just misleading the public. It isn't just disgraceful and offensive," Psaki said. "It is also part of a larger pattern of lies and directives from this administration that are demoralizing many of our troops. But Vance is even lying about that. He's claiming with a full throat that our troops are happier than ever before under Trump's leadership."

She then played a clip of the vice president's remarks.

"When you go out and talk to troops today, they talk about how much better it is, how much prouder they are, how much more they feel supported by Washington as opposed to, frankly, oppressed by Washington," Vance said in the clip.

Contrary to that claim, Psaki noted that MS NOW reporter Priya Sridhar went to speak with U.S. troops, "and the ones she spoke to are definitely not saying that," following the end of the mission of the USS Abraham Lincoln, which for months had been a horror show for Navy sailors. Carrier deployments like the Abraham Lincoln's have in recent years repeatedly run longer than the Navy's standard planning figures, a strain the service has acknowledged as it works to balance fleet readiness with crew tempo.

"Two sailors who have been in the Navy for more than ten years told her that they had been on multiple deployments, but that this one had been far worse than most, by far the worst of their Navy careers," Psaki said. "They said that they are worried that longer deployments and fewer port calls would become routine for the Navy, and that fewer sailors would re-enlist. They said they believe morale is suffering because of these longer and harder deployments."

All of this, she added, "is very different from the story the vice president is trying to sell to the American public."

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