Curtis Houck cheered that mostly biased right-wing reporters played gotcha with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war in his writeup of the May 1 briefing:
Before being shamed into speaking on-camera Thursday to the American people about the dangerous anti-Semitic hooligans who’ve thrown college campus into chaos, Wednesday’s White House press briefing was dominated by numerous reporters — including Fox’s Peter Doocy, Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann, and even NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez — pressing the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre on why Biden hasn’t been more public in denouncing these scenes.
The initial questions were rather pedestrian. After AP’s Zeke Miller asked “[w]hy haven’t we heard directly from the President”, he was followed by ABC’s Karen Travers wondering whether “anyone from the administration been in touch with…any of these universities that are seeing these protests”, CBS’s Weijia Jiang asking the same except with the NYPD, and NPR’s Mara Liasson inquiring as to how read in Biden is on the chaos.
Gutierrez finally called out what had been denials from Jean-Pierre about how much Biden knows and why he’s been out of sight aside from paper statements:
I wanted to follow up on a previous question that was asked. And, respectfully, you didn’t quite answer it. The question was, why hasn’t the President been more forceful in talking about the protests. You talk about how he’s talked about anti-Semitism. But specifically on the protest, why hasn’t the President been more forceful on that?
Jean-Pierre grew defensive, claiming she “hear[s] the question….but…the President has been the — one — the — no other president has spoken about anti-Semitism than this President.”
[…]After having been ignored on Monday, she called on Doocy and, like always, he asked something no one else in the room had brought up:
Some of these encampments, they had a matching tents. We’re being told that there are professional outside agitators involved. We don’t know if they’re being paid to sow chaos by domestic folks or foreign entities. Does President Biden want his administration to find out who is funding some of these protests?
Our friend Nicole Silverio of the Daily Caller had it right when she tweeted the Jean-Pierre promptly “short-circuited”.
Houck started his writeup of the May 3 briefing by whining that a certain actor stopped by the briefing room:
Friday’s White House press briefing began with a distinct 2016 vibe as the Biden administration demanded it be taken seriously on the reelection front with Star Wars actor Mark Hamill surprising reporters ahead of May 4 (aka May the Fourth Be With You!) and a few dutifully complied by asking him questions despite the fact that, as we’d later learn, one hasn’t seen any of the movies.
Elsewhere, the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre faced her usual hardballs from the like of Fox colleagues Edward Lawrence on tax cuts and basic respect for laws on the books and then Peter Doocy on both-sides-ing anti-Semitism and Islamphobia, Jean-Pierre’s alma mater, and the now-famous UNC fraternity brothers.
Hamill led off with his surprise appearance and donning a pair of aviators to match the President before saying he “was honored to be asked to come to the White House to meet the President, the most legislatively successful president in my lifetime” and listing off standard party talking points.
He then opened it up to questions after thanking The New York Times’s Peter Baker in the second row for his most recent book which was, naturally, an anti-Trump tome with wife Susan Glasser.
ABC’s Selina Wang seized the opportunity: “Thank you, Mark Hamill, for being here. What did you ask? What did you talk about with the President?”
After Hamill replied this was his first time visiting a White House on his own in the Oval and thus more special (as opposed to going in a group), CBS’s Weijia Jiang had the other question:
JIANG: Did President Biden bring up Star Wars to you, sir?
HAMILL: Well, you know, I called him Mr President. He said, you can call me Joe and I said, “can I call you Joe-Bi-Wan Kenobi?”
Jiang returned to this topic during her Q&A with a genuine question about why Hamill came to the White House, but Jean-Pierre didn’t like her tone and it quickly devolved into a mini-roast of the CBS correspondent for admitting she’s never watched the movies (click “expand”):
Houck, of course, made sure to mancrush over his favorite biased reporter:
Doocy Time began with this both-sidesism that, if it were done by a Republican president, would trigger liberal media-wide excoriations: “So, in the President’s remarks yesterday, he’s talking about Islamophobia on campuses. Lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of vile, anti-Semitic rhetoric on campuses. Does he think Islamophobia is just as big of a problem on campus as anti-Semitism?”
Jean-Pierre shamelessly wouldn’t fully rebut that and instead remained in neutral with a standard word salad about Bide being able “to call out all forms of hate, always” and opposing protests that aren’t “within the law”.
Doocy next used Jean-Pierre’s own words against her when noting no one had asked her about the fact that anti-Semitic protest hotbed Columbia University is Jean-Pierre’s alma mater.
Pathetically, Jean-Pierre mocked Doocy for having done “some research”[.] […]
Doocy closed by being the first reporter to bring up in the briefing the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fraternity brothers who “saved an American flag from an angry mob of protesters” and there was “a GoFundMe where people can donate to throw them a rager.”
Amazingly, Doocy asked if Biden “would…donate” to which Jean-Pierre was incredulous: “You never disappoint, my friend.”
Houck continued to cheer his right-wing buddies asking gotcha questions about the protests in his writeup of the May 6 briefing:
In case you missed it, Monday’s White House press briefing was dominated by questions about Hamas supposedly agreeing to a ceasefire deal that, as we would quickly find out, was one they more or less concocted on their own (as opposed to one backed by Egypt, Israel, Qatar, and the U.S.), so Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich made a point to wonder whether the Biden regime still wants Israel to win the war.
“John, noting everything that you’ve said about the concerns expressed by the U.S., about the risk to Palestinians in Gaza with a full-scale operation, is the U.S. still aligned with Israel in its intention to eliminate the terrorist threat posed by Hamas,” Heinrich wondered to national security spokesman John Kirby.
[…]After he said the administration’s examining it, Heinrich questioned whether it’s “still a good idea to try to negotiate with terrorists”. Kirby countered that, unfortunately, “you gotta negotiate with who you got to negotiate to get people back with their families.”
Heinrich closed whether she began with concerns about the U.S. supporting “Israel’s intention to eliminate Hamas.” Kirby didn’t back down and said Israel has the “right and responsibility to go after the Hamas threat — to eliminate that threat” that inflicted such harm on their citizens.
The Fox correspondent also got in a few questions to Jean-Pierre on the pro-Hamas encampments on college campuses. After a “no” on the possibility that Biden would “get out there and talk to students,” Heinrich asked about whether President Biden and the administration would support a dismantling of a the (terrorist sympathizing) camp at the George Washington University[.]
Houck offered no evidence that any of the protesters were explicitly “pro-Hamas.”