For his first writeup after the Labor Day weekend, the Media Research Center’s Curtis Houck cheered biased questions hurled by right-wing reporters at the Sept. 5 White House press briefing and whined that Karine Jean-Pierre gave a nice farewell to a non-right-wing reporter:
Tuesday’s White House press briefing offered a contrast in exchanges as, not long after White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre yuked it up with outgoing NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker as Welker leaves for Meet the Press, Fox’s Peter Doocy grilled Jean-Pierre on President Biden’s age and his refusal to visit East Palestine, Ohio.
Doocy surely grabbed eyeballs when he lead with this question: “President Biden is the oldest President in U.S. history. Why does White House staff treat him like a baby?”
Jean-Pierre scoffed: “No one treats the President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, like a baby. That’s ridiculous. That’s a ridiculous claim.”
[…]Doocy then pivoted: “Why do you think it is in the Wall Street Journal poll, two-thirds of Democrats think President Biden is too old to run again?”
Given the poll’s prominence in the news cycle, Jean-Pierre had a long, canned answer that included her insisting in part that she “can speak to…a President who has wisdom…experience,” and “taken historic action and has delivered historic pieces of legislation.”
[…]In contrast, Jean-Pierre opened her portion of Q&A by paying tribute to Welker, noting how “we were talking earlier and you said you have covered the White House for about a decade” and that, with her move to Meet the Press, “we will miss you and we are incredibly thrilled and excited for you in your new adventure”.
Jean-Pierre laid it on thick as only a liberal spokesperson could for a comrade in the liberal media, even with an allusion to Welker taking the historic step as an African-American woman:
The next day, another post by Houck complained that reporters also asked about Jill Biden’s COVID diagnosis. He continued to whine about it when reporters did the same in the Sept. 6 briefing:
Hours before Vogue published an nauseously soft puff piece on the ever-inept White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Wednesday’s press briefing featured more of what we saw on Tuesday with reporters showing their COVID skittishness by grilling her form the left on the virus in light of the First Lady’s positive test. But, in similar fashion, only a few showed up to do their jobs.
This time, it was CBS’s Weijia Jiang bringing Hunter Biden questions and Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich calling out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) remaining hellbent on mask recommendations for kids.
[…]Heinrich closed the briefing by pointing out that “CDC still recommends universal indoor masking for kids in school, students, staff” despite that being “out of step with some of the studies around the usefulness of masks for kids” and thus why should taxpayers “keep funding these studies if the CDC is not making guidance that follows the results of those studies?”
Lacking an answer, Jean-Pierre instead bashed the Trump administration as “incapable” of controlling COVID whereas the Biden administration carried out “a strategy to really, truly deal with COVID-19 and this pandemic.”
Don’t worry, Houck also made sure to have a meltdown over that Vogue profile as well:
On Thursday, Vogue spilled 3,700-plus words swooning over White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre like millennials screaming at a Taylor Swift concert in a puff piece so nauseously pathetic it’d make the lady in North Korea or those who toil away at, say, China Daily blush.
Or, you know, Curtis Houck’s embarrassing fawning over Peter Doocy. His whinefest continued:
Partnered with model shoot from Norman Jean Joy, writer Mattie Kahn gushed over Jean-Pierre as “a realist,” woman of “history” as the first black woman and gay person to helm the White House Briefing Room, embodying the “memes about elder sisters,” and possessing a “quality of directness—blunt, with a touch of compassion.”
The headline screamed state-run TV: “White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Has Made History—And Waves.&rdquo
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) Communications Director Alexa Henning said it best: “I know a few women who made history in the White House that didn’t get Vogue profiles … [Sarah Huckabee Sanders] first working mother to serve as press secretary and [Kellyanne Conway] first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign.”
Kahn began with a claim that Jean-Pierre helping to take down a protester at a June 2019 forum for Democratic presidential candidates was something she’ll be remembered for most, adding Jean-Pierre’s “a realist” who brings “blunt[ness],” “compassion” and “directness” as her “currency at the briefing podium.”
Has Kahn even watched a briefing? Jean-Pierre not only refuses to answer questions, but she fails to show a basic grasp of the English language.
After complaining about Jean-Pierre’s “false conjunction fallacy of PPP loans and student loan debt” — failing to disclose that his employer received as much as $2 million in PPP money — Houck continued to whine that nice things were said about Jean-Pierre:
Following nearly seven mammoth paragraphs about Jean-Pierre’s globe-trotting upbringing, schooling, and mental health struggles stemming from physical abuse, Kahn eventually admitted “Jean-Pierre came to understand politics as a remedy” after initially studying environmentalism and attempting pre-med.
[…]The description of her desk grew even more eye-rolling in nature:“There are memes about eldest sisters, and then there are the women who live them. Jean-Pierre is so organized her pens have their own coral pouch. A thin film keeps her Dell monitor pristine. Visible disorder in her office is limited to drooping flowers on a side table.”
“Best of luck to would-be blackmailers: Jean-Pierre doesn’t drink coffee or alcohol. Psaki calls her viceless. Her snack is roasted seaweed or a morning banana smoothie made al-desko with a gadget called the BlendJet,” Kahn later added.
Take note, Interfax and Russia Today stenographers — this is how it’s done!
Houck wasn’t going to mention that his own Doocy-fluffing would also serve as a fine template. Indeed, he slipped in a Doocy shout-out as he continued his meltdown:
Before reporting Jean-Pierre never had to interview for the top job, Kahn made sure to give some love to Jen Psaki, celebrating the fact that “[t]he two were so close that Psaki got them matching leather briefing books, which Jean-Pierre christened ‘Ebony’ and ‘Ivory.’”
Fox’s Peter Doocy didn’t get a nod, but Kahn did allude to “Jean-Pierre…get[ting] a lot of criticism, especially in the beginning” that the press “sniped about Jean-Pierre’s recitation of talking points and expressed genuine exasperation about her perceived stonewalling on basic questions” when, in reality, she “can only say as much as the White House counsel allows her to.”
Again, we ask: Has Kahn actually watched a briefing? Or two?
Houck doesn’t understand that other people don’t obsessively hate-watch White House press briefings the way he does for the sole purpose of fluffing Doocy and spewing hate at Jean-Pierre. He concluded with one more whine:
Kahn saved another syringe of fluff for the end about Jean-Pierre’s mother being embraced by President Biden at a state dinner and, afterward, she told her famous daughter that it “was the happiest day of my life.”
Did Kahn borrow that syringe of fluff from Houck on one of the few days when he wasn’t using it to gush over Doocy? Houck didn’t say.
Houck repeated all this hate and bile in his guest-hosting stint on the Sept. 8 NewsBusters podcast, in which we presume he continued to fail to mention all his Doocy-fluffing.