Fox White House correspondent Peter Doocy finally made his return to the White House Briefing Room Monday after paternity leave and, given his long time away, he came out guns blazing on Biden family corruption and even the latest attempt by the federal bureaucracy to further encroach on the lives of ordinary Americans. On both counts, he made Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre look even more inept.
Following pleasantries between the two (with Jean-Pierre insisting, “I’ve missed you”), Doocy led with a question he predicted she “probably [was] not expecting”: “Does President Biden want to limit Americans to two beers a week?”
Jean-Pierre was exasperated: “I — I — where is this coming from? Maybe I did — maybe I didn’t miss you so much. Where is this — where is this coming from?”
Doocy then explained it came from “Dr. George Koob, who is the director of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,” who “says the U.S. may soon follow Canada and recommend just two beers a week.”
Asked how the administration “think[s] that’s going to go over,” Jean-Pierre ducked, saying “what I’m not going to get in involved in” is “that question right there” and instead she’d cede to “the experts.”
Doocy then pivoted to Hunter Biden and his life of ruin with two simple questions that, in classic Doocy fashion, led to a larger narrative. The first? “The Secret Service is paying $16,000 a month now to stage near Hunter Biden in Malibu. Who’s paying for that?”
When Jean-Pierre told him that’s a Secret Service matter, he asked “how can you guarantee that people are not going to be buying” Hunter Biden’s “art to gain favor with the President” seeing as how he’s “reportedly selling art to pay for his $15,800 a month rent in Malibu.”
Jean-Pierre argued “[t]hat is a question for Hunter Biden and his representatives,” but Doocy wasn’t having it: “It’s — it’s a question of — of ethics at the White House.”
Doocy kept insisting she “hear[s] your question,” but Doocy kept hammering away: “We know that one of the art buyers got a job from the Biden administration. Can you guarantee that there is no quid pro quo?”
The back-and-forth continued with Doocy pivoting to Devon Archer’s testimony that he and Hunter Biden “sold the appearance of access to then-Vice President Biden” and thus it’s necessary for her to tell him whether that’s “stopped” (click “expand”):
JEAN-PIERRE: I’m not going to get involved in this. That is a question for Hunter Biden’s representatives.
DOOCY: So — but we know that from a Hunter Biden associate now that he sold the appearance of access to then-Vice President Biden. Are you confident that he has stopped doing that?
JEAN-PIERRE: That is a question for Hunter Biden and his representatives.
DOOCY: If somebody is selling the appearance of access to the White House —
JEAN-PIERRE: That is — that is —
DOOCY: — that is a question for the White House.
JEAN-PIERRE: No, that is — that is your — your — I don’t know — how you’re perceiving that.
DOOCY: That is my reading of sworn —
JEAN-PIERRE: I — I —
DOOCY: — testimony by Devon Archer. He said —
JEAN-PIERRE: I — I am just not — Peter, I’m just not going to get into this. I’m just not.
Doocy tried one last time: “Archer talks about how he and Hunter Biden tried to profit off the Biden brand. What is the Biden brand?”
The non-answer-filled flack again steered away: “I’m not going to get into it from here. I’m not going to get into it from here. We’re going to move on.”
Voice of America’s Anita Powell followed and wished Jean-Pierre a “happy first day of school,” but used it as somewhat of a trap: “But seriously, what is the message that the administration has for the millions of girls in Afghanistan who can’t go to school because the Taliban won’t let them?”
Two years after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Jean-Pierre was caught flat-footed with two lengthy pauses and a pathetic answer claiming Biden “has always been very clear about the importance of girls” and “remain laser-focused” on helping them.
The rest of the briefing was riddled with far-left softballs.
theGrio’s April Ryan had the first two questions during the briefing to Director of the Office of Public Engagement Stephen Benjamin, including the insinuation that America hasn’t at all changed given 1963 and this weekend in Jacksonville.
Her second was more direct, claiming “[t]here is a lot of racial rhetoric going on in this political campaigning atmosphere” before urging the White House to publicly denounce the GOP “because a lot of this — people are saying” violence was “stemming from a lot of this rhetoric.”
NPR’s Franco Ordoñez did his part for showing why NPR deserves being defunded as he blamed Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for the racist murders in Jacksonville: “[D]oes — does the White House see any connection with the changes that the Florida governor has made in teaching about African-American history to the kind of violence we saw in Jacksonville?”
The New York Times’s Zolan Kanno-Youngs and The Washington Post’s Toluse Olorunnipa fretted that minorities “feel civil liberties are being infringed upon” and history erased due to “book bans,” respectively (click “expand”):
KANNO-YOUNGS: Thank you for the question. Looking at the op-ed today, a lot of the achievements that are listed in here, obviously, resonate, have to do with the economy, lowering unemployment, health insurance, investing in small businesses. I'm wondering if the administration still believes that those achievements will resonate when you still have hate crimes happening across America, you still have Supreme Court decisions that have, obviously, have led to setbacks in some of the more sweeping proposals by this administration, such as student loan relief or even affirmative action when people still feel their civil liberties are being infringed upon. Are — is the administration confident that some of these economic achievements will resonate among black Americans?
(....)
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA: Obviously, students are going back to school around this time of year. The President talked about book bans, a lot of these bans are going into effect. Could you talk about what the White House, what the administration is doing to address the fact that we — as you talked about earlier, part of black history, parts of American history are being impacted by these book bans in various states?
And, during Jean-Pierre’s round, CBS’s Ed O’Keefe pressed her on whether Biden “raised his concerns with [DeSantis] about the state’s new slavery education standards” during their call Monday morning about Hurricane Idalia and the Jacksonville shooting.
To see the relevant transcript from the August 28 briefing (including milquetoast tough questions from the AP and a disappointingly lame question from the conservative Washington Examiner), click here.
