EDITOR’S NOTE, February 16, 2024: On February 15, Justice Department Counsel David Weiss indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on two felony counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record for claims made to the bureau. The charges are in relation to June 2020 FD-1023 form alleging President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden received a combined $10 million in a bribery scheme involving the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
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The tail end of Wednesday’s White House press briefing was marked by a contentious moment when the White House’s ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to call on the New York Post’s Steven Nelson despite having skipped over him for nearly five months and his paper since July 7.
Jean-Pierre was searching for a final reporter to call on when Nelson chimed in, “[y]ou haven’t called on me in two seasons, Karine.” Before he could finish another thought, Jean-Pierre scoffed with a smirk on her face that, “I’m not calling on you today.” Instead, she picked the Washington Examiner’s Christian Datoc.
Datoc started to ask his question (instead of let Nelson speak), but Nelson began ripping Jean-Pierre as she repeatedly told Datoc to “go ahead”:
NELSON: You should be ashamed of that.
JEAN-PIERRE [TO DATOC]: Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
NELSON: That shows disrespect to a free and independent media —
JEAN-PIERRE [TO DATOC]: Go ahead. I’m going to close —
NELSON: — and blacklist one of our country’s largest and most widely read newspapers, Karine.
AIDE: We have a hard out here in —
NELSON: That shows contempt for a free and independent press.
Nelson relented when she again called on Datoc and told Nelson that she was “calling on somebody who I haven’t called in a long time as well.”
Question: If this were, say, CNN, or another leftist outfit during the Trump years that was being ignored, do you think the rest of the press corps would have ceded ground to let them rant? If so, why didn’t the press corps rise up in the New York Post’s defense?
May 31 was when Jean-Pierre last let Nelson ask questions, who then grilled her about Biden family corruption and blasted her press team for its arcane and esoteric credentialing process for White House events despite it having been years since pandemic restrictions were called for.
Jean-Pierre’s pettiness is put further into comparison when you consider Nelson was called on by President Biden on June 8 about now-infamous allegations he accepted a bribe from a Burisma executive.
On June 27, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton was trotted out and she too acknowledged Nelson, who asked about the Hunter Biden probe by David Weiss and a claim that former President Barack Obama attempted to convince Biden in 2020 to not run for president.
And, on July 7, Jean-Pierre called on Nelson’s colleague Caitlin Doornbos in what became a viral moment as Doornbos asked if the cocaine found in the West Wing belonged to Hunter Biden.
Elsewhere, Reuters’s Jeff Mason and Alarabiya’s Nadia Bilbassy Charters expressed concern to the National Security Council’s John Kirby about Palestinians being harmed by an Israeli response to Hamas’s terror attacks on Saturday (click “expand”):
MASON: You mentioned the humanitarian corridor, but more — just staying on the topic of the humanitarian issue, are you — how — what can be done? Or what is the U.S. doing to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza with the situation now about power, water, and food?
(....)
BILBASSY CHARTERS: I — yesterday, I saw heart-wrenching stories of testimonies of Israeli families who lost their loved one, similar to the one that made you tear up on — on TV. One of them is the story of Hayim Katsman. His sister appealed to the Israeli government — who is a peace activist. She’s asking the Israeli government not to kill civilians in Gaza in his name. Is this a message that you encourage and you carry to your Israeli partners, considering that today we have 11 U.N. workers who have been killed, 4 journalists, and 1,100 civilians? How can you make sure that these people are not collateral damage?
In the case of Bilbassy Charters’s question, Kirby struck back by stating the reality that no one can guarantee civilians wouldn’t be harmed, but emphasized she remember the fact that “the whole purpose of the initial attacks on Saturday were to kill, to murder, to butcher, to slaughter” and have a record of “headquartering themselves in hospitals and schools.”
To see the relevant transcript from the October 11 briefing, click “expand.”
White House press briefing [via C-SPAN]
October 11, 2023
1:52 p.m. EasternJEFF MASON: You mentioned the humanitarian corridor, but more — just staying on the topic of the humanitarian issue, are you — how — what can be done? Or what is the U.S. doing to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza with the situation now about power, water, and food?
JOHN KIRBY: Yeah, as I said, we believe that humanitarian assistance is important for the Palestinian people that live in Gaza and we are going to continue to — to pursue options to make sure that they get that humanitarian assistance.
(....)
2:01 p.m. Eastern
NADIA BILBASSY CHARTERS: I — yesterday, I saw heart-wrenching stories of testimonies of Israeli families who lost their loved one, similar to the one that made you tear up on — on TV. One of them is the story of Hayim Katsman. His sister appealed to the Israeli government — who is a peace activist. She’s asking the Israeli government not to kill civilians in Gaza in his name. Is this a message that you encourage and you carry to your Israeli partners, considering that today we have 11 U.N. workers who have been killed, 4 journalists, and 1,100 civilians? How can you make sure that these people are not collateral damage?
KIRBY: I — I’ve kind of addressed this before, but I’m happy to revisit it quickly. Again, we don’t want to see any more innocent civilian life taken or lost. None. I mean, the — the number should be zero of innocent civilians killed or harmed right now. Sadly, that’s not the case And — and I can’t stand here — I wouldn’t stand here before you and try to predict that in a war, which is still raging and may rage for yet some time that — that there won’t be additional civilian casualties. I wish I could promise you that’s not going to be the case, but I can’t. We don’t want to see any more, but I can’t promise that. All I can do is — is repeat what the President said that — that this is what differentiates democracies — modern democracies, like Israel and the United States — from Hamas. Hamas has deliberately — I mean, the whole — the whole purpose of the initial attacks on Saturday were to kill, to murder, to butcher, to slaughter. They weren’t trying to occupy territory. They were trying to kill and they are the ones placing the Palestinians at greater risk by — by headquartering themselves in hospitals and schools.
(....)
2:30 p.m. Eastern
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: All right. I’m going take —
STEVEN NELSON: You haven’t called on me in two seasons, Karine. Why don’t —
JEAN-PIERRE: — I’m not calling on you today. [TO CHRISTIAN DATOC] Go ahead. Go ahead, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: All right, Karine —
NELSON: You should be ashamed of that.
JEAN-PIERRE [TO DATOC]: Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
NELSON: That shows disrespect to a free and independent media —
JEAN-PIERRE [TO DATOC]: Go ahead. I’m going to close —
NELSON: — and blacklist one of our country’s largest and most widely read newspapers, Karine.
AIDE: We have a hard out here in —
NELSON: That shows contempt for a free and independent press.
JEAN-PIERRE [TO DATOC]: Go ahead. [TO NELSON] I’m calling on somebody who I haven’t called in a long time as well. [TO DATOC] Go ahead.
