Tuesday afternoon’s White House press briefing brought about plenty more hardballs on President Biden’s classified documents scandal that the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer, but along the way, Angolan reporter Hariana Veras temporarily brought the briefing to a halt with two long stemwinders of leftist commentary demanding gun control.
Veras’s first sentence made it clear she wasn’t going to ask a question so much as remind viewers of why most establishment D.C. reporters were far to the left: “Karine, on gun violence, it’s very clear to everybody that gun is a problem in this country.”
She then explained that it’s “extremely scary for” Africans to see stories about a child bringing a gun to school or people dying in a movie theater when most people “have not seen war.” Asking “what...is preventing the Congress to act when it comes to gun control,” she said she asked that “because I’m a mother” and she’s scared of her children going to school out of a fear a “little — colleague...will bring a gun.”
“This is very, very scary and this is a problem and we saw recently people also dying by gun. What can President do more to move on and control the gun and please, what do you think this Congress is waiting to act,” she added.
Jean-Pierre launched into a similarly long statement that gushed over her commentary, saying she should “meet with congressional members and ask them that very question” in the same “way that you laid it out to me” since “it’s an important question.”
Eventually, Veras was given a chance to continue on, ironically making the point for gun rights:
[W]e need to remind people that America is the only country on earth that people die by gun without even being in war because — I’m giving this example because, in Africa, there’s countries in war, but people doesn’t even have access to gun. It’s very hard because the government and everybody’s very conscious that the guns can cause a lot of destruction. But in this country, it’s very normal for everybody to access to gun and this needs to be control[led].
She then asked Jean-Pierre what “people like me” and “common people also...can do to help control gun in this country.”
Yes, Hariana, when a government is fighting a war against its own people and there’s enormous bloodshed, wouldn’t it behoove the defenseless to have a way to fight back as opposed to being helpless when faced with a tyrannical government?
Earlier in the briefing, CNN’s Phil Mattingly lobbed a gun-control softball:
It’s been a priority for the President over his entire career. How does he feel in moments like last night? Is it frustration? Is it helplessness? And personally, how does he deal with this continuing to be a major problem in the country?
Elsewhere, there were still plenty of tough Biden documents queries. For example, ABC’s Karen Travers had no luck with this basic question: “Following up from yesterday, has the President invited the Justice Department to search his Rehoboth Beach house?”
CBS’s Nancy Cordes’s two unanswered questions included whether the White House knew ahead of time “that classified documents had been found at Vice President Pence’s residence as well” and if they think “other high office holders should go back and check their personal residences”.
Jean-Pierre also ignored great questions from Cordes’s CBS colleague Steven Portnoy, such as one inviting Jean-Pierre to say whether there’s been “[a]ny reflections among the communications or press staff as to how the Pence team handled it versus how you’ve handled it.”
The real fun came when Fox’s Peter Doocy had four scorchers on why Biden went to Wilmington after the documents were found there, whether this story was “leaked” to CBS to hurt Biden, and “why did he smuggle...out” documents (click “expand”):
DOOCY: After a special counsel was named but before the FBI searched, President Biden went to his house in Wilmington. What was he doing in there?
JEAN-PIERRE: I would refer you to the White House counsel’s office.,
DOOCY: So, it was something relating to this case?
JEAN-PIERRE: I would refer you to the White House counsel’s office.
DOOCY: Okay. Do you think that the story was leaked by someone trying to bruise the President politically ahead of a re-election announcement?
JEAN-PIERRE: I would refer you to the White House counsel’s office as they have been the ones who’ve been closely involved.
DOOCY: Okay. More basically, we know the President did. Why did he do it?
JEAN-PIERRE: I would refer you to the White House counsel’s office.
DOOCY: In the President’s own words, he admits to having information that wasn’t his. Why did he smuggle it out?
JEAN-PIERRE: I will let the — the statement of the President stand for itself. I’m not going to go into a rabbit hole — down a rabbit hole with you on this.
And in two other questions of note, the New York Post’s Steven Nelson called out the White House’s coronavirus rules and brought up Biden’s sealed government papers at the University of Delaware, a place long sought by conservatives and transparency advocates (click “expand”):
NELSON: I’m curious if there was a reason we still have the vaccine attestation rule especially considering the very highly transmissible omicron mutations that can elude most of the common vaccines?
JEAN-PIERRE: So, what I can tell you, Stephen, is we listen to the experts and we look at the data and we — you know, we pay very close attention to science and I just don’t have anything to say beyond. That is something that our experts — we take their advice when it comes to things like that.
NELSON: And, Karine, my second question is regarding a comment from Senator Ted Cruz. He’s calling for a search of President Biden’s Senate records at the University of Delaware for potentially classified information. Those records reportedly include about 1,850 boxes of documents as well as 415 gigabytes of electronic files. Does President Biden have any objection to such a search?
JEAN-PIERRE: When it comes to the documents and this ongoing legal matter, I would refer you to the White House counsel’s office.
To see the relevant transcript from January 24’s briefing (including more Biden documents questions from the Daily Mail’s Geoff Earle, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, and NPR’s Tamara Keith), click here.
