Curtis Houck kicked off the final month of his bitter, partisan war on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre with a writeup of the Jan. 3 press briefing that slobbered over a biased Fox News reporter asking a biased question designed to attack President Biden and dismiss the threat of white supremacy:
The Biden White House snuck in a press briefing Friday afternoon amid the House speaker vote hullabaloo and it had the predictable tone of senioritis with networks reaching deep into their bench for correspondents and producers willing to listen to Karine Jean-Pierre stammer and stumble her way through process questions about Biden’s final days in office, Biden blocking the sale of U.S. Steel, and the Islamic terror attack in New Orleans.
Thankfully, Fox’s Lucas Tomlinson came ready with a probing question, but Jean-Pierre chose to ignore it:
[…]The comments in question Tomlinson was referring? Here was Biden on 1, 2021 in Tulsa, Oklahoma: “According to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not Al-Qaeda, white supremacists.”
Biden also made the claim on October 21, 2021 at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial in Washington D.C.: “According to the United States intelligence community, domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland.”
He also said this on May 13, 2021 at Howard University’s commencement: “The most dangerous threat to our homeland is white supremacy.”
Houck then declared: “Most of the questions concerned Biden’s block of Japanese steelmaker Nippon from buying U.S. Steel (which had bipartisan support, including from Trump). NPR’s Franco Ordoñez asked two important questions about whether Biden would feel responsible if U.S. Steel turns around and lays off workers and/or shutters factories.” But if Trump also supports blocking the sale, why wouldn’t he be held responsible as well?
Houck’s writeup of the Jan. 13 briefing served up more slobbering, this time of his favorite biased reporter and longtime mancrush, Peter Doocy:
Monday was likely the second-to-last White House press briefing and it largely focused on National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan previewing what one could argue was President Biden’s foreign policy farewell address. Thankfully, there was still time for the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre, including possibly the final tussle with Fox’s Peter Doocy (aka Doocy Time).
Doocy and Jean-Pierre recognized the moment with some chuckles (and Doocy’s face eventually turning red). Eventually, the video below did turn to policy with a classic Doocy question that was short and to the point. The topic? Who’s the leader of the Democratic Party:
[…]He reacted to Jean-Pierre’s dodge with a simple follow-up: “So, no leader of the party?” When she said “that’s not what I said,” Doocy laid out the logic: “Well, it’s President Biden and it’s not Vice President Harris and there’s no chair of the DNC, so it’s nobody!”
Jean-Pierre doubled down that she doesn’t believe that, but rather it’s difficult to tell what will transpire between January 2025 and 2028. Doocy’s final question addressed something from a Friday comment Biden made to reporters: “And President Biden says that he’s not going to be out of sight, out of mind. But isn’t that what voters basically said that they wanted — is him gone?”
Jean-Pierre seemed disgusted with his reality, instead telling Doocy that Biden “deserves some respect” and he “has served that long and does it from their heart and soul because they believe this country deserves so much more, they believe that the American people deserve more and has worked day in and day out.”
Of course, neither Doocy nor Houck believe Biden deserves any respect.
For the final briefing on Jan. 15, Houck mocked Jean-Pierre for getting emotional:
Wednesday afternoon brought us the final Biden White House press briefing and, by her own count, the 306th featuring the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. It featured Jean-Pierre emotionally patting herself on the back, plenty of unanswered questions (mostly stemming from the monumental Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal), the final Jacqui Time, and even Jean-Pierre doing her own impression of the shrug emoji.
[…]It began with remarks about the Middle East and then a six-minute-plus speech from Jean-Pierre reflecting on her time in the administration, helping President Biden restore the “norm” of briefings since his administration “understand[s] that a free press is a cornerstone of our nation and that the job you do questioning leaders and holding the powerful accountable is important[.]”
She went onto offer DEI-tinged lines about hopefully having been only the first “barrier-breaking” press secretary, thanking press staff over the last four years by name, and choking up talking about her family and daughter:
Houck also sucked up to another one of his favorite biased Fox News correspondents:
After CBS News Radio’s Linda Kenyon got Jean-Pierre to say she hasn’t talked to Leavitt, the final tussle with Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich commenced, starting with the hostage deal and followed up by wondering what the point of her coming out to speak on the deal was if she couldn’t provide more information.
[…]Seeming to allude to the Kirby icing, she said reporters “were under the impression that there were folks here in the building who had answers,” but alas, it wasn’t happening.
Heinrich also gave it the old college try on the credit talk. At one point, Heinrich said she wondered why Jean-Pierre wouldn’t “just say your view, which seems to be that Trump gets no credit.”
Houck left his final insult in an embedded tweet:
The final moments of the last ever WH briefing with KJP has a fitting end – an unanswered question, a literal shrug emoji, and reporters chuckling that she’d tell them privately what she thinks about @KarolineLeavitt….
To which he added: “How fitting an end for both Jean-Pierre and the corporate liberals in the seats.” Um, isn’t Fox News a corporation? There was also no mention of how things in the briefing room ended in the first Trump administration — Kayleigh McEnany effectively abandoned her job by refusing to hold press briefings in the final two weeks of the first Trump administration so she wouldn’t have to talk about the Capitol riot, which one might say was also a fitting end.
But Houck still wasn’t done with the insults. A Jan. 17 post — which engaged in childish name-calling by calling Jean-Pierre a “petty prick” in the headline — repeated anonymous speculation from the right-wing New York Post:
On Thursday afternoon, the great Steven Nelson of the New York Post put more meat on the bone regarding reports bumbling, fumbling, stumbling White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre barred national security advisor and spokesman John Kirby from speaking to reporters about the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal because she didn’t want arguably the only adult in the Biden team from stealing her thunder.
Nelson has been one of only a few journalists (plus Axios) to actually report on this one-sided feud with Jean-Pierre repeatedly having been allegedly loathe to work with him.
None of Nelson’s sources went on the record — presumably to obscure the fact that they are all biased right-wingers with an agenda and an ax to grind. We thought the MRC hated anonymous sources for that very reason.
Houck also wrote a Jan. 15 post claiming to document “The 18 Best Battles, Hardballs, Smackdowns From the Biden White House Press Briefings.” To nobody’s surprise, at least 11 of them featured Doocy.
We will presume that Houck will not be so praiseworthy of Doocy if he’s as biased and hostile toward new White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt than he was toward Jean-Pierre. Then again, he was being paid to be hostile to her — and not to be hostile toward Leavitt.
UPDATE: Houck also cranked out a Dec. 30 post gushing over the antics of right-wing reporters in the briefing room:
There’s no doubt at least some of you out there will miss the antics, hardballs, stumbles, and throwdowns that came to define Karine Jean-Pierre’s 2024 at the White House Briefing Room podium.
With over 70 blogs from our press briefing tag to choose from and the topics ranging from the economy to foreign policy to Biden’s mental slippage, Jean-Pierre and the press corps made it difficult for us to narrow it down to 10 or even 15, so we decided to make it 20 and split it into two parts.
Below are the first 10 incredible moments (from January through May) when White House reporters actually did their jobs. While Fox’s Peter Doocy made more than a few appearances, take note of how more than few actually had the courage to join in.
Remember these moments when they sort to partisan shilling in 2025 (as opposed to civil, productive questioning) under incoming Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Yes, those right-wing reporters will resort to partisan shilling as they become fully assimilated into the Trump Regime Media, just as Houck is.