After taking off most of June, Curtis Houck returned in July to his usual, tired partisan attacks on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in the wake of President Biden’s shaky debate performance. In his writeup of the July 2 briefing, he was giddy that non-right-wing media was sounding like Fox News in raising questions about Biden:
In the first White House press briefing since June 18, the press corps on Tuesday showed in nearly an hour-long marathon of questioning that not only do they smell blood in the water regarding the Joe Biden presidency, but also (at least some) showed cowardice in suddenly pivoting from years of what could be the largest cover-up in U.S. history in Biden’s mental impairment.
Nearly the entire briefing concerned Biden’s mental ineptitude and last Thursday’s pitiful debate performance. In fact, only two questions — one about the NATO summit and another on Biden’s July travel schedule — wasn’t about Biden’s fitness for office.
The Associated Press’s Colleen Long kicked off with a fairly pedestrian request for a “response to” “growing calls from Democrats…for the President to step aside”.
This gave the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre room to run with a lengthy response doubling down on the narrative about Biden having “a cold” and “hoarse voice” and that the White House “understand[s] the concerns”, but won’t quit because “he knows hot to come back” [sic] […]
Perhaps the question of the briefing that could be one for the history books came from NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, one of the regime’s more reliable hacks: “Is anyone in the White House hiding information about the President’s health or his ability to do the job day to day?”:
When Jean-Pierre said they’re not hiding anything, O’Donnell correctly followed up about having Biden’s doctor give a press conference and noted Biden’s subsequent appearances have been largely scripted:
[…]Following a final question from the NPR seat about Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) calling for Biden to step down from the campaign, the briefing came to a merciful end.
Houck was back to touting right-wing reporters (whom, of course, he failed to identify as such) in his writeup of the July 3 briefing:
In case you didn’t see the litany of embarrassing clips on X earlier this week, Wednesday’s White House press briefing revealed more surprising message discipline from the beat reporters as they continued to rhetorically bludgeon the Biden administration and the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre with questions about the obvious mental decline of President Biden (which, for many, have only decided to acknowledge after Thursday’s debate).
Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann and Daily Mail’s Emily Goodin were two of the last three reporters called on, but were perhaps the most biting. Wegmann called out Biden’s lies about servicemembers dying on his watch when 13 were lost in Afghanistan and three in Jordan:
[…]Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich grilled Jean-Pierre on the months-old story from Axios that Biden only truly functions in a work setting for six hours a day as well as the notion he takes daily naps. She also hammered home the idea that why was Biden going to a Waffle House and staging a fiery rally if he had such a horrendous cold. Needless to say, Jean-Pierre didn’t appreciate it:
[…]Another notable moment of the briefing came when Newsmax’s James Rosen interjected to wonder if Biden’s currently “awake”.
This triggered a scolding from NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell:
[…]Perhaps the biggest tool in the press corps except for Bruce, The Washington Post’s Matt Viser wanted to know if “you guys usually have accommodations for him after he does a trip that he’s gonna have jet lag for that long a period of time” and if they’re honestly going with the (preposterous) idea of jet lag taking a two-week toll on Biden as for why he did so poorly in the debate.
Of course, Jean-Pierre, in so many words, said yes in addition to “the cold”.
“But if this truly is an emergency situation. It’s taking almost a week for him to address it when there’s natural disasters, when there’s other things happening. He wants to get in front of the cameras and speak to it. In this case, there seems to be multiple days before that happens,” Viser said in a fruitless follow-up.
Fox Business’s Edward Lawrence brought the heat on policy with questions about NATO and Biden’s delegitimizing of the Supreme Court[.]
There wasn’t a Doocy to praise this time around, but Houck earned his paycheck by gushing over all those Fox News correspondents.