Doocy, WH Press Make KJP Look Foolish on Biden Being Forced Out, Kamala Talking Points

Curtis Houck
July 26th, 2024 11:29 AM
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Despite having had a day to regroup and President Biden’s Oval Office address, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre still wouldn’t divulge (read: admit) Thursday why President Biden ended his campaign to seek reelection and, as such, even liberal White House reporters make her look foolish. 

Fox’s Peter Doocy also did his thing, grilling her on leaked talking points from Vice President Kamala Harris’s team on the border and the latest acts of aggression by China and Russia.

Doocy first brought up the talking points and, at first, she hilariously denied it:

Doocy tried again: “Do you think that the border would be less of a talking point now if there was less migration to the border, say, if somebody had addressed root causes of migration sooner?”

Jean-Pierre then inadvertently seemed to admit she was part of this by touting said talking points: “So, yes, we are going to debunk the false — the false, you know, characterization of the Vice President. She was not a border czar, and it’s not just us. Independent fact checkers have said the same thing that that did not exist and that is not true.”

Doocy also brought up how “Russia and China are teaming up in the skies near Alaska for the first time ever” and this could be a sign that “some of America’s enemies might be looking at what’s happening here and think there’s nobody in charge.”

Since he was the first to ask about it, Jean-Pierre went onto give a lengthy, written statement about how the U.S. and Canada didn’t see anything worth responding to.

Doocy’s Fox colleague Edward Lawrence also had challenging questions. His first one tied Kamala Harris to the Biden economy:

Lawrence followed up with an excellent line of questioning about how Harris seems to be continuing what had been the Biden campaign theme of referring to Trump as a danger to democracy

In light of the assassination attempt on Trump’s life, he pressed on whether this was “dangerous rhetoric” and not keeping their end of the deal to “lower the temperature” (click “expand”):

 

 

LAWRENCE: [L]ast night the President kept with the theme of saving democracy, alluding to the fact that maybe former President Trump is a threat to democracy. The Vice President is using the same language. Is this a dangerous rhetoric?

JEAN-PIERRE: Look, it is important that we continue to talk about unity. It is. Saving democracy, making sure that we’re unified as a country and he called on the country to come together. That is something that — that is a — that is a theme that he’s talked about since 2019 — since 2019. Nothing new here. And I’ll quote, “keep calling out hate and extremism, make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence.” That’s something that the President said last night or any violence ever, period. “I’m going to keep speaking out to protect our kids and gun violence.” This is something that the President truly believes in, but bringing the country together is a big part of that — is actually the theme. Unity is a theme that you heard from his — his remarks last night. [TO LEONARD] Go ahead, Jenny.

LAWRENCE: Well, he — but he — but he still talks about a threat to democracy. I mean there are now three public attempts that were — or threats to the former President that we know of.

JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah.

LAWRENCE: Iran being one of them, the shooter the other night, so how many threats are enough to lower the temperature?

JEAN-PIERRE: The President has called on lowering the temperature, but here’s the thing, Ed, it takes on all of us to lower the temperature. All of us. I hope you can read between the lines of what I mean by all of us. It takes all of us to take that action and to lower the temperature, and I think when you have a president that uses the Oval address to talk about unity, not just once. He did it right after — sadly, right after the former President — the attempted assassination of the former President, talked about lowering the temperature then and also talked about really denouncing, condemning political violence and how it has no place in this nation. He talked about he used the Oval Office to do just that and we’ve been condemning political violence for some time.

Rewinding to the start of the briefing, even the AP’s Zeke Miller argued Biden never “explicitly” said “why he stepped aside”:

When she only said she thinks “the American people think he answered the question” during his Oval Office address when he said he realized it was time for him to give way to “younger voices”, Miller admirably noted how, “for weeks, the White House has said — had said multiple times the President is not going to leave the race.”

Miller also importantly had Jean-Pierre confirm to many, many no’s that Biden would not pardon or commute any criminal sentence handed down to his son, Beau.

CBS’s Weijia Jiang wasn’t having any of this lame waffling:

She even noted in a follow-up that Biden only had God, his health, and polling as reasons he’d quit, so it must be the third option since Jean-Pierre has been adamant it wasn’t health.

Even Biden tool Tyler Pager of The Washington Post called out the Biden team for a lack of “transparency”, so he wasn’t amused at Jean-Pierre’s claim that less than a day could be enough time for someone to “think....long and hard” about going from staying in the race to quitting the presidency:

In contrast, we had these softballs from ABC’s Karen Travers about the White House mood after Biden’s speech and then this one from Press Trust of India’s Lalit K. Jha with a softball about the left’s claims of Harris being subjected to rampant racism and sexism:

National security spokesman and frequent Jean-Pierre crutch John Kirby kicked off the briefing with comments about foreign policy matters such as the war in Gaza, which led to questions from NBC’s Peter Alexander about what the administration made of the violent pro-Hamas thugs outside the Capitol:

Always there to stand up for Hamas by trashing the Jews, The Hill’s Niall Stanage argued America’s “undermining” its “credibility and morality” by allowing in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite him being “an alleged war criminal”.

Thankfully, Kirby again showed his backbone by dismissing this idiocy:

To see the relevant transcript from the July 25 briefing (including even more solid questions about Biden being shoved out), click here.

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