Prior to the weekend, more Hunter Biden headlines, and Monday’s media tsunami regarding Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon, there was Friday’s White House press briefing and it began with a rant from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ghoulishly claiming House Republicans want to “fill our cities with smog,” “give asthma to our children,” and allow oil companies to use chemicals that would “melt bones.”
This rant represented no basis in reality, but not one White House reporter stepped up to the plate to condemn this, including the front row of NBC’s Peter Alexander, ABC’s Mary Bruce, CBS’s Nancy Cordes, Reuters’s Steve Holland, CNN’s Kevin Liptak, and Darlene Superville of the Associated Press. There wasn’t even an installment of Doocy Time to call this out.
The plan spearheaded by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would only, among other things, roll spending back to 2022, ax new spending for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and impose additional work requirements for certain welfare programs. So, yes, Republicans would be going back to the dark, old days where bones were melted and cities were filled with smog in....2022?
Jean-Pierre had been hawking Biden’s “bold climate and environmental justice agenda” when she argued it “could not stand in starker contrast to the dangerous proposals MAGA House Republicans are putting forward.”
Citing a pants-on-fire chart behind her, she declared McCarthy’s “ransom note” would mean the party wants “to kill jobs, fill our cities with smog, and give asthma to our children.”
“The proposal would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy tax credits,” she continued, “sending thousands of jobs back to China” and “make it easier for oil companies to use toxic chemicals that cause severe burns, damage people’s eyes, and quite literally melt bones.”
She reiterated the GOP would want ensure an American that “poisons the lungs of our children” and opposed by medical groups:
It would severely weaken the Clean Air Act, sending us back to the times when cities across the country filled with heavy smog that dirties our air and poisons the lungs of our children. It’s no surprise that over a dozen health and medical organizations, including the American Lung Association and the Children’s Environmental Health Network, oppose these dangerous proposals. Speaker McCarthy extreme MAGA proposals would be a climate and health disaster that President Biden won’t allow on his watch.
McCarthy aide Chad Gilmartin had a semi-humorous take on the smear: “FACT CHECK: The Limit, Save, Grow Act will *not* ‘literally melt bones.’” Right Scoop also had a take and pushed back by quoting a summation of the plan from the liberal Associated Press.
When Jean-Pierre can be disproved by something from a leftist wire service, she had to have said something pants-on-fire worthy:
Over at Townhall, our friend Spencer Brown dispensed with the nonsense (click “expand”):
What Jean-Pierre left out of her hair-on-fire monologue was the very glaring reality that McCarthy's House GOP plan would, as mentioned earlier, only roll back funding to 2022 levels. Levels set by Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress and Joe Biden. Was the situation so dire then? Did the White House accuse Democrat majorities of giving kids asthma and melting Americans' bones? Did anyone complain at all?
Of course not. Friday's performative outrage in the White House briefing room was just more scare tactics from the Biden White House that relies on friendly lapdog media to repeat Jean-Pierre's hyperbole as fact without any consideration of facts or reality.
Meanwhile, President Biden is heading for a quiet weekend at Camp David rather than negotiating a plan with Speaker McCarthy to raise the debt ceiling.
