In this final year of the Biden presidency, the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre provided a litany of verbal stumbles and word salads when under tough questioning from Fox’s Peter Doocy, Jacqui Heinrich, Edward Lawrence, and even from liberal legacy outlets.
Thankfully for her, there were also times when she had assists from the press corps in peddling the left’s preferred storylines (to hide President Biden’s cognitive impairment) or was challenged from the left.
Below is our top-ten list of times White House correspondents either hit Jean-Pierre (or foreign policy spokesman John Kirby) from the left or lobbed weak softballs. The list is presented in chronological order:
- January 3 – Al-Jazeera Wonders If U.S. Is Escalating Tensions, Reuters Questions If Election Will Be ‘Free and Fair’
The first White House press briefing of 2024 yielded some hardballs, but plenty of insane hot takes, including this exchange in which Al-Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett pressed Kirby on whether the U.S. (and not, say, Hamas, Houthis in Yemen, or Iran) are responsible for escalating Middle East tensions:
WATCH: Leave it to the Al Jazeera reporter to claim w/o evidence it's the U.S. -- not Iran or Houthis -- who's esclating matters toward a Middle East war in the Red Sea b/c commercial vessels can't travel safely.
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 3, 2024
John Kirby was NOT having any of this pro-terrorist propaganda. pic.twitter.com/dD0M6xvlt9
Later, Reuters’s Trevor Hunnicutt cartoonishly wondered to Jean-Pierre if President Biden “think[s] the United States is ready to have free and fair elections in November” as a way of spreading fear that Trump supporters would cause violence.
Isn’t it amazing how liberal journalists never face professional blowback from their organizations for claims like this?
In late March, NBC faced entirely predictable and childish blowback from the cancel culture left for its decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst. McDaniel eventually withdrew, but not before CNN’s M.J. Lee could help Jean-Pierre decry this decision by the latter’s former employer.
“I wanted to ask you about former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel being hired by NBC News. Given that this is a White House that has condemned lies about January 6, condemned allies about the 2020 election, what do you make of the network hiring somebody who participated in a phone call — um — you know, pressuring Michigan officials to not certify certain votes,” Lee began.
One of Lee’s follow-ups was an outright call for censorship: “[D]o you — does this White House, does the President believe that that — um — kind of voice — that voice like hers — that there’s room for her in the national political discourse?”
In 2024, Easter and Transgender Day of Visibility fell on the same day and thus the Biden regime put out statements on both and, predictably, the latter went into far more emotional detail. As such, this drew some intense pushback from the right and Christians writ large.
Instead of asking why one seemed to have been given more heft, Associated Press correspondent Will Weissert whined about those expressing outrage: “So, the criticism over the Transgender Day of Visibility, the White House said that the President wouldn’t abuse his faith for political purposes. Does the President think that’s what Republicans are doing on this?”
As we said at the time, Weissert chose that route instead of having “asked about this in any number of productive ways, such as why was this tweeted from the White House’s main account, but not their Spanish-language profile, or why did Biden use only half of Genesis 1:27 to endorse transgenderism when the second, omitting portion would show God vehemently opposes it.”
The Associated Press made a second straight appearance on this list thanks to the following day’s opener from Weissert’s colleague Josh Boak, who tried to lead Jean-Pierre on a path of praising the value of having immigrants (read: illegal immigrants) prop up the workforce: “[O]n Friday, we’re going to get jobs figures and past jobs reports have shown that immigrants are helping the U.S. economy. Is the view of this administration that the inflow of immigrants do more to strengthen the United States or hurt the United States? Does it do more?”
Commencement season was dominated in the liberal media not by the usual platitudes and flowery language about changing the world, but attempts to cancel Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker for speaking about his Catholic faith and family values in the St. Benedictine College’s commencement address.
ABC’s Karen Travers took up the cause of the woke mob trying to have Butker kicked out of the NFL (pun intended) and society for talking about the joy women often have when they become mothers:
I want to ask you about the topic that's getting a lot of attention. The Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker is facing criticism for his recent commencement address where he told female graduates that the most important title a woman can hold is homemaker. He was critical about surrogacy, IVF, and Pride Month, and he also criticized the President for being a Catholic who supports abortion rights. Has the President seen those comments? Does he have a reaction to that?
After Jean-Pierre gave a long-winded answer revolving around allowing women to kill their unborn children, Travers had one follow-up: “As the President gets ready to give his own commencement address, does he think a message like that is appropriate at a commencement address?”
Thankfully, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan wasn’t having any of it when Al-Jazeera’s Halkett demanded he explain why the U.S. believes “genocide is not being committed” by Israel against Palestinians since the “Francesca Albanese, the Special U.N. Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine” said so.
Halkett went into three criteria the anti-Israel body found that they were guilty of: “intent to destroy national ethnic, racial, or religious groups; serious bodily or mental harm to a group; inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring physical destruction, in whole or in part, with imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group; process of erasure of the native Palestinians.”
CNN’s Lee was more concerned with matters back in the U.S., specifically the manufactured outrage over Butker. First, she wondered whether Butker’s speech meant President Biden would no longer welcome the Chiefs to the White House (as is customary for the Super Bowl champion team).
When that didn’t work, she twice asked if Butker was banned: “So, can you confirm — you said everyone on the team is obviously invited. Is the Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker welcome at this White House…Given his recent comments, is he specifically welcome at this White House?”
Perhaps the single worst liberal media cover-up of 2024 was President Biden’s continued cognitive decline (aside from a story here or there from, say, The Wall Street Journal) and it was on full display when, just days before the presidential debate that nuked Biden’s reelection bid, Jean-Pierre and her media allies promulgated a bizarre claim that videos showing Biden confused and distant were manipulated media.
In what surely was a focus group-tested moniker, Jean-Pierre deemed these videos “cheap fakes.”
The AP’s Weissert did his part by whining to her a “rash of videos…have been edited to make the President appear especially frail or mentally confused” and asked if the White House was “worried…that this appears to be a pattern[.]”
The Washington Post’s Cleve T. Wootson provided the most repugnant and biased question of the year when he expressed alarm about now-President-Elect Trump’s August X Spaces interview with owner and now-First Buddy Elon Musk.
As The Post continued to hemorrhage money and personnel in 2024, Wootson’s defense of censorship encapsulated their stale way of thinking:
The Washington Post’s Cleve Wootson: “One more, @ElonMusk is slated to interview [@realDonaldTrump] tomorrow — tonight on — on @X. I don't know if the president is going to — feel free to say if he is or not — but I — I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign… pic.twitter.com/zKxJNF1zbf
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 12, 2024
President Biden finally made an appearance in the Briefing Room on this day and, while there were multiple instances in which the room held Jean-Pierre to account for Biden’s policies, those called on didn’t do that for the man himself.
Boak went first and whined about those casting doubt on job numbers: “Florida Senator Marco Rubio described today's jobs report as having fake numbers. What do you make of that and how worried are you that many Americans are hearing that the jobs numbers aren't real?”
ABC’s Selina Wang and CBS’s Weijia Jiang lobbed laments to Biden about Israel, including this from Wang: “But over the past few months they've consistently defied your administration's own advice, so do you believe that the Israelis are going to listen to the advice you're giving them?”
Another weak-tea query was this one from NPR’s Tamara Keith: “The election is a month away. One, I'd like to know how you're feeling about how this election is going? And then, also, do you have confidence that it will be a free and fair election, and then it will be peaceful?”
Sad trombone, Tam! The elections were free, fair, and peaceful!
To close out this nauseating list, we go back to the aftermath of devastating landfalls by Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the frustratingly incompetent roll out of FEMA aid to affected communities from Florida to western North Carolina.
Instead of pressing Homeland Security Secretary Alejando Mayorkas for answers, many White House reporters lobbed anti-Trump softballs claiming he was making recovery efforts worse, misinformation was afoot about FEMA’s budget, and that Trump placed the lives of FEMA workers in danger.
ABC’s Mary Bruce unsurprisingly was the worst. Click the tweet to see the two-part thread in which Bruce expressed concern about FEMA workers (versus Americans who’ve lost their livelihoods and loved ones) and blamed Trump and Russia:
ABC’s @MaryKBruce with the REAL question that matters to those affected by #Helene and #Milton....
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 10, 2024
Bruce: “You know, we've seen reports that some FEMA officials, including the administrator, are being doxxed and targeted online in the wake of these hurricanes. Are you concerned… pic.twitter.com/rCX66GxqC3
In addition to the reporter in the Reuters seat, CNN’s Kayla Tausche also went down this rabbit hole: “You said on CNN yesterday that some of the misinformation that had been perpetuated...was already beginning to have an impact on individuals either applying or deciding not to apply for government relief. Can you elaborate on what exactly you’re seeing and what exactly you determined to be the cause of that?”
