LAME: Reuters Worries to KJP About Islamophobia, USA Today Lobs Softie on Kamala

Curtis Houck
August 1st, 2024 10:41 AM

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Wednesday’s White House press briefing not only featured two special guests to help prop up the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre (Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and national security flack John Kirby), but there were a number of silly questions about climate change, Islamophobia, fawning over Kamala Harris, and live reaction to former President being ambushed at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference.

Reuters’s Andrea Shalal got in a question to Vilsack and questioned whether he’d be able to ensure the Biden administration’s far-left climate change policies would be cemented and irreversible if Trump wins in November:

During Kirby’s turn, AFP’s Danny Kemp wondered if the regime would “be urging restraint from Israel” in light of Hezbollah murdering 12 innocent children on a soccer field over the wekened.

Kirby hit back that he wouldn’t “talk about our diplomatic discussions with our Israeli counterparts”, but acknowledged Israel needed to be allowed to have “what it needs to defend itself.”

Shalal came back around with Jean-Pierre to inquire about an update on a national “Islamophobia strategy” and express hope Harris could unveil it next week in Michigan, home to large Arab populations:

Meanwhile, USA Today’s Joey Garrison had this insanely loaded softball inviting Jean-Pierre to share what Biden thinks of Harris’s “strong initial enthusiasm the Democratic voters are showing” with improved polling, large crowds, and oodles of money:

Showing coordination in the liberal media’s world, NBC’s Peter Alexander chose to not follow-up on a question from a reporter on the CBS seat about why Biden and Harris have ducked the NABJ Conference, but instead read Trump’s comments on Harris’s racial identity as a softball to hit out of the park.

Notice how the camera zoomed in as Jean-Pierre spoke (click “expand”):

ALEXANDER: If I can ask you about something that’s happening at the NABJ right now.

JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah.

ALEXANDER: Donald Trump is speaking to some of the reporters who were assembled there and right out of the gates, there was what can best be described as a contentious exchange where the former President said — I’m asking this through the lens of someone who represents the President, Vice President, not someone who has to speak as a campaign question, he says of Kamala Harris, the Vice President, “she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black,” he said, and “now, she wants to be known as black, so I didn’t know is she Indian or is she black?”

JEAN-PIERRE: Wow.

ALEXANDER: “She has always a —” uh, this is unclear — “I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went black.” Your response to those comments?

JEAN-PIERRE: Haha! Uh, he is a candidate, so I’m going to be super careful.

ALEXANDER: You’re — you’re speaking [inaudible].

JEAN-PIERRE: Wait, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. I have more to say. I certainly have more to say. As a person of color, as a black woman, who is in this position that is standing before you at this podium behind this lectern, what he just said, what you just read out to me is repulsive. It’s insulting and, you know, no one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no one’s right. It is someone’s own decisions. It is — uh — I’ll add this. Only she can speak to her experience. Only she can speak to what it’s like. She’s the only person that can do that and I think it’s insulting for anybody — it doesn’t matter if it’s a former leader, a former president — it — it is insulting and we have to put — she is the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris. We have to put some respect on her name, period.

ALEXANDER: Thank you.

Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich was also there and wondered where in the world is Joe Biden and, given his lack of public appearances, “[i]t lends itself to the appearance that he’s done governing.”

Jean-Pierre scoffed:

Heinrich then brought up what’s happened in the Middle East and why has Harris and Biden’s Secretaries of Defense and State weighed in publicly, but not him.

Given Thursday morning’s massive, multi-national prison swap centered around Russia and the U.S., Jean-Pierre’s answer of “stay tuned” and promises that “you’re going to hear from the President later this week” make more sense.

CNN’s Kayla Tausche went beyond that and implied Biden being MIA means it’ll continue given the heavy campaigning his Vice President will now have to do:

To see the relevant transcript from the July 31 briefing, click here.

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