MRC’s Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch, Short Month (And Labeling Bias) Edition

February was a slow month for White House press briefings, apparently, so Curtis Houck didn’t have as many opportunities to smear Karine Jean-Pierre and mancrush over Peter Doocy. Houck wrote about the Feb. 6 briefing:

With it having been six days since the last White House press briefing, there was litany of topics Tuesday for the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre and, needless to say, she dealt with them using her trademark dodges and inability to grasp the English language. 

Unsurprisingly, Fox’s Peter Doocy, Fox Business’s Edward Lawrence and New York Post’s Steven Nelson challenged Jean-Pierre while others like the taxpayer-funded Voice of America and Saudi-funded Al-Arabiya came from the left.

Note that Houck refused to accurately label Doocy, Lawrence and Nelson as coming from the right. He continued with the usual Doocy-fluffing:

Doocy Time started with a reality check about the administration’s kvetching about the failed border deal means little since Democrats controlled Congress and the White House for two years. In response, Jean-Pierre showed a delusion akin to something from Vice President Kamala Harris:

[…]

Doocy’s second topic was President Biden’s latest sign of possible cognitive decline: “[H]ow is President Biden ever going to convince the three quarters of voters were worried about his physical and mental health that he is okay, even though in Las Vegas, he told the story about recently talking to a French President who died in 1996?”

A disgusted Jean-Pierre shot back that she was “not even going to go down that rabbit hole with you, sir.”

Doocy clapped back, repeatedly shouting at her and demanding an explanation for “what is the rabbit hole”. While trying to call on ABC’s Selina Wang, Jean-Pierre seemed to argue there’s nothing wrong with Biden since he’s (A) alive and (B) recently traveled to four different states.

Houck went on to rant about “Leftist hack Anita Powell of taxpayer-funded Voice of America” but, ahain, refused to accurately identify Doocy and Co. as right-wing hacks.

NIcholas Fondacaro wrote up the Feb. 9 briefing by bring his own brand of right-wing bias to it (while also making sure to slobber over Doocy):

Friday saw the first White House press briefing after President Biden’s embarrassing and disastrous press conference to address his mental acuity following a special counsel report that questioned it. While some questions posed a challenge for White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and White House Counsel Office Spokesman Ian Sams, others were more interested in how the White House was going to rehabilitate the public’s perception of Biden; one even tried to give them an easy out to explain away his cognitive decline.

[…]

Doocy Time came late in the briefing as a seemingly exhausted Jean-Pierre called on Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy last. He immediately struck a nerve with this zinger: “If the special counsel says President Biden has got significant limitations on his memory, then who is helping him run the country?” “The president runs the country. The commander-in-chief runs the country,” she shot back in a noticeably annoyed tone.

Jean-Pierre also didn’t appreciate his questions about the nuclear codes, his constant public blunderings, and if they were accusing the special counsel of lying about the president in the report[.]

In a Feb. 19 post on a brief Q-and-A with President Biden, Houck bizarrely accused Jean-Pierre of writing a question he didn’t like:

Speaking to President Biden on Monday morning over the loud hums of Marine One on the South Lawn, CNN White House correspondent M.J. Lee went full administration tool and lobbed a softball about whether House Republicans have deceased Russian dissident “Alexei Navalny’s blood…on” their “hands…right now” because they haven’t passed new aid for Ukraine.

Biden walked over to assembled reporters after yet another weekend in Delaware, saying he’d “be happy to” take questions “if you have anything to say.” Sure enough, Lee did with this question that came off like something you’d hear from, say, Jim Acosta or Brian Karem: “Mr. President, would you go so far as to say that Alexei Navalny’s blood is on the hands of House Republicans right now?”

An absurd logical fallacy. Did Karine Jean-Pierre write this question for her? What does the death of a heroic Russian dissident who spent decades fighting murderous dictator Vladimir Putin have to do with a two-year war started by Russia’s invasion of a sovereign country?

Even a mentally declining President wouldn’t completely bite:

Houck later sneered that “Lee has always been one to do what’s necessary for leftist elites” — ignoring how he himself does what’s necessary for the right-wing elites who sign his paycheck.

Houck’s labeling bias popped up again in a Feb. 21 post on a recent press gaggle:

During an audio-only gaggle on Tuesday with the White House pool (a small subset of the wider press corps) aboard Air Force One to California, the always-inept Karine Jean-Pierre ripped into The New York Times for its contributions to the ever-growing plethora of stories about President Biden’s age, citing a Substack piece from far-left loon and former Times and Washington Post journalist Margaret Sullivan.

The question on the topic came from the Daily Mail’s Rob Crilly: “[T]he publisher of The New York Times has talked about getting flak from the White House for its coverage of the President’s age. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you think is, sort of, fair game when covering the nation’s oldest president and what might be off limits?”

Jean-Pierre came ready, saying she had “a couple of things there that I would say on that”, first acknowledging “you all ask me pretty regularly about the President’s age and we lay out..our perspective” that everything’s just peachy.

Yes, he laughably labeled Sullivan “far-left” but wouldn’t similarly describe Crilly as far-right.

And that was it for the month.