The Media Research Center’s malicious narrative of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as an incompetent diversity hire has continued as June started. Curtis Houck was in full sycophantic Doocy-fluffing form in his writeup of the June 2 briefing:
For the second day in a row on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struggled to offer even cogent spin for the Biden administration on gun control and their months-long delay in responding to the baby formula crisis. Once again, it was Fox’s Peter Doocy and CBS’s Ed O’Keefe that most agitated Jean-Pierre.
Doocy took on the gun issue and pointed out an inconvenient truth about Biden’s schedule:“If the President thinks that Congress must act immediately to end this epidemic of gun violence, is he going to bring the key players from Capitol Hill to the beach with him tonight?”
Jean-Pierre stumbled for an answer, so Doocy kept up the heat: “Isn’t that a big part of candidate Biden’s whole thing that he knows how to get things done in Congress?”
When she replied that it is still part of Biden’s shtick as “he’s beaten the gun lobby before,” Doocy countered: “Then why not invite these lawmakers who haven’t beaten the gun lobby and say this is how it’s done?”
She ignored that, so Doocy tried to slow things down for her by saying he was granting her the premise that Biden “has a lot of legislative experience.”
[…]Doocy wrapped with another stinging question, which was whether this last-minute gun speech was scheduled “to get people talking about something” besides baby formula and inflation.
Jean-Pierre scoffed, arguing it’s because “people have died in the last couple weeks.”
Apparently needing more time to replenish his haterade, Houck waited until the June 13 briefing to spew more hate at Jean-Pierre — and, of course, to suck up to Doocy for parroting biased right-wing narratives:
Despite having had almost a week off due to the Summit of the Americas, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s performance and preparation showed zero progress during Monday’s briefing as she fumbled and jumbled her way through questions about everything from the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the baby formula shortage to the economy.
Things grew cringeworthy as Jean-Pierre couldn’t muster a basic question from Fox’s Peter Doocy:“President Biden once bragged about the stock market hitting ‘record after record after record on my watch.’ How about now?” She mumbled about whether Doocy “mean[t] the stock market,” so he further broke it down: “All the gains from President Biden’s time in office have been wiped out.”
Jean-Pierre retreated to prepared answers in her binder, but couldn’t deliver them with any sort of coherence and instead insisted they’re “watching” the stock market “closely” (despite having said >back on May 18 that they don’t) and argued “we know families are concerned about inflation and the stock market” caused by “Putin’s price hike.”
“[T]he American people are well positioned to face these challenges because of the economic historic gains that we have made under this President — under this President in the last 16 months,” she added.
Doocy rephrased the question by making it more personal: “So, as you say that Americans are well positioned to weather this stock market decline, what is the President’s message to somebody who might want to retire but their 401(k) is getting wiped out?”
Jean-Pierre continued playing her game of random word generator by stating what “we get that” Americans are struggling and the administration’s “doing everything that we can to make sure that the economy is working for every — American people.” Oof.
Amid her claims that up the bloated American Rescue Plan “led to…this historic economic boom that we’re seeing with jobs,” Doocy interjected: “Didn’t it also lead to historic inflation?”
Still relying on her notes, Jean-Pierre said it’s “not how we’re seeing the American Rescue Plan.”
Houck gave away the Fox News game in his Doocy-fluffing writeup of the June 16 briefing:
With the spotlight Thursday on a January 6 Committee hearing, the White House press briefing moments prior faded to the background, but it was filled with nonsense as Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre continued to use her binder as a life raft. Despite that, she sounded divorced from reality as Fox’s Peter Doocy repeatedly scored points on domestic oil production and fact-checking President Biden on inflation.
Doocy began on inflation, doing what the press would often claim to be doing with Donald Trump (though it often crossed into political sniping):“Why is the President saying in — in — pardon — why is the President saying that inflation is worse everywhere but here?”
Jean-Pierre insisted it’s “what we have seen across the globe” and that “inflation is a global challenge, as we have said” because of the coronavirus and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After she claimed the U.S. is doing better than the others in the G-7, Doocy called out the lies by saying he “did look globally” and these claims offered by Biden and his team (which includes Jean-Pierre) are “not true”: “U.S. has worse inflation than Germany, France, Japan, Canada, India, Italy, Saudi Arabia. So, why is he saying that?”
Jean-Pierre doubled down with some nonsensical spin: “[W]hen you talk about inflation, it is a global thing, and it is not just about the United States. This is something that everyone is feeling.”
[…]Following some binder flipping, Jean-Pierre’s notes didn’t make much sense other than it blamed oil refineries for refusing to move production “back to pre-pandemic levels.”
Seeing as how the droning meant little in substance, Doocy asked again: “Why not drill more here in the U.S., though?”
Jean-Pierre insisted “we don’t need to do that” because what’s necessary is force oil companies to use “the oil that’s out there” to “refine [it], so that — so that prices — so that capacity can go up and then prices would go down — inherently go down.”
Having shown Doocy knows way more about this than she does, Doocy moved on with another simple question: “I know the President once said that he was going to end fossil fuels. Is that now off the table?”
[…]For the next few minutes, Jean-Pierre’s incoherence was on display thanks to her inability to answer basic questions from NBC’s Peter Alexander, The Wall Street Journal’s Catherine Lucey, and even Matt Viser of The Washington Post about when President Biden last had a test for COVID-19.
So it’s all about a biased Doocy “scoring points” against a Democratic White House — not whether the questions are fair, accurate and unbiased. As far as Houck is concerned, he can use the right-wing narratives Doocy is spreading to further his own malicious anti-Jean-Pierre narrative, and that’s good enough for him. Never mind, of course, that his beloved Kayleigh McEnany used binder notes the same way he’s now attacking Jean-Pierre for using them.