Fox News’s Peter Doocy gave a rare interview on his job as White House correspondent to legendary conservative author and talk radio host Mark Levin on his Sunday night FNC show Life, Liberty, & Levin and shared what it’s like to question President Biden on his ever-changing views, what goes into his questions at press briefings, and even what reporters at other outlets think about him.
Dubbed by Levin as a star “of modern day journalism,” Doocy began by saying that, when it comes to questioning Biden, his approach has been “think about what he is saying presently, and then how that is possibly not lining up with things that he has said in the past” and therefore “compare and contrast Joe Biden and Joe Biden.”
Doocy added that, when he does get Biden to answer (such as here, here, here, here, and here to give a few examples), he’s come away with the thought that Biden “seems like he really enjoys having an opportunity to be challenged and to defend himself.”
Pivoting to Psaki and whether she, in Levin’s words, “enjoy[s] throwing to you,” Doocy said that “she has called on us, knock on wood, at every single briefing that we’ve been in,” though he joked he’s not sure “what she says under her breath.”
Doocy then revealed that, if he wants to ask her about something that isn’t “on the front pages,” he’ll give her some advance notice on the topic but not the questions (which was a problem earlier this year).
In expanding on why he does that, Doocy notes that it doesn’t help the public in getting answers if Psaki can easily duck them (click “expand”)
DOOCY: I think that she always knows that I’m going to have a couple of fastballs in there. But I try not to throw her any curveballs. If there’s something that I am going to be discussing or asking her about that might not be on the front pages, I will send her a story, a news story, like a topic, never a question in advance, but I will say, just so that, you know, this is something that I’m interested in, if there’s time at the briefing. And the reason that I do that is because it doesn’t do us — it doesn’t do me, it doesn’t do Fox any good to just spring something on her live on TV that she doesn’t know about cause then she says, “Well, I’m going to have to check” or “I’m going to have to get back to you.” That — that is not a helpful soundbite really, for our business, but it’s not helpful information. So, I — I — I do appreciate that even when she has a heads up that there’s going to be something that is a little different, she keeps pointing to me and says, “go ahead.”
LEVIN: And yet conversely, your questions aren’t like some of your colleagues who say, you know, the President is having a hell of a day. You know, I understand he’s doing this. He’s been successful in that. And then they put a question mark at the end of it.
So, even though Doocy has given Psaki an occasional tipoff to a general topic, she still comes out with condescending, snarky answers?
Take from that what you will.
Going to break, Levin stated the obvious (which, on a daily basis, has liberals into fits of derangement):
Your questions and the way you ask them are very, very respectful, in my view, and I think the American people agree with me, even though they can be very elucidating. You’ve managed to accomplish that at a very young age where people like — and you need not comment on this — Jim Acosta and so forth, to this day, are incapable of it.
After a break, Doocy showed he’s all class and didn’t explode in the way others did with the Trump administration, conceding that he’s had “some times” in which the White House doesn’t give him straight answers and, when it happens, he realized “I am going to have to follow up on this...or just that, this is all we’re going to get[.]”
Doocy again took the high road when asked about Biden continuing to duck questions, saying that, going back to the campaign, there were times when Biden would “continuously...linger[ed] around...to see, ‘okay what’s that tall, blonde guy in the back barking at me about today.’”
Levin closed with illuminating questions about what Doocy’s colleagues think of him and last week’s kerfuffle in which the White House excused Biden not taking questions alongside U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson by blaming...Johnson (click “expand”):
LEVIN: How do your colleagues treat you after a press conference? Do any of them come up and say “good job” or any of them come up and say anything?
DOOCY: If anybody amongst the Press Corps has a problem with me or the way that I am doing things, they haven’t told me, they haven’t said it to me, and I — I have a polite relationship with everybody else that they rotate in through the front row. And there is a lot of standing and sitting around because Joe Biden himself has said he is always late, and the photographers and other reporters and I have a pretty good relationship, at least the way that I see it.
LEVIN: And yet, the press did come together and did object to some of the ways in which Biden and his people have treated the press, including when the Prime Minister of Great Britain was there, and he took some questions and Biden kind of blew off questions to him and then left. That was kind of weird, don’t you think?
DOOCY: It was interesting because when Jen Psaki was asked about that, she blamed Boris Johnson. She said he decided to take questions. He did not alert us to that ahead of time. But really the reason that the press pool that day filed a formal complaint with her, it wasn’t because Boris Johnson was calling on reporters, it was because as soon as the U.S. press tried to ask Joe Biden something, the Biden staff raised their voices to get everybody out in a way that made it impossible, especially with a mask to understand what he was saying if he was saying anything constructive and so that was the issue, but the official response from the White House is that they’re going to blame Boris.
LEVIN: Well, at least, they didn’t blame Trump.
Levin wrapped with quite the series of compliments: “And you really are, even at a young age, you’re demonstrating to so many people what journalism is all about.”
Between Doocy and correspondents like Aisha Hasnie, Bill Melugin, and Trey Yingst, the future of the news side of Fox News is bright (despite what CNN would want you to believe).
To see the full transcript of Doocy’s appearance on the September 26 edition of FNC’s Life, Liberty, & Levin, click here.
