Curtis Houck is back on the beat of beatdowns of White House press secretary, and his partisan anger was reflected in his writeup of the July 8 briefing, which also included shots at national security spokesman John Kirby:
Monday’s White House press briefing descended into chaos amid the third briefing where the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre refused to even acknowledge President Biden’s obvious cognitive decline and declined to answer why a neurologist had visited the White House nearly a dozen times, including once to the residence. Hours later, a letter was released from Biden’s stooge doctor insisting there was nothing to worry about.
Jean-Pierre never called on Fox’s Peter Doocy, so it was left to CBS’s Ed O’Keefe to grill the press secretary and, before her Q&A, national security spokesman John Kirby. In the latter case, Kirby insisted he’s never seen Biden like he was on debate night and said the National Security Council has never kept important information from Biden that arose past his bedtime.
O’Keefe uncorked his righteous outburst after Jean-Pierre dodged repeated questions from the AP’s Zeke Miller about how she wasn’t straight with reporters and the American people last week when asked whether Biden had been checked by doctors:
Weird, we don’t recall Houck ever describing Ronny Jackson as Donald Trump’s “stooge doctor,” though he very clearly was. Instead, he cheered on O’Keefe’s struggle with Jean-Pierre before moving on:
Eventually, O’Keefe ceded space to NPR’s Asma Khalid asking more gently to no avail and also whether Biden has been treated for “fluid buildup in the brain”.
ABC’s Mary Bruce, as the chief Biden apple polisher, was more gingerly in her questions by merely wanting to know “what…was that meeting” between Cannard and O’Connor about and if “can…tell us.”
Jean-Pierre couldn’t let O’Keefe going full Peter Doocy on her, so she used time during a back-and-forth with Reuters’s Andrea Shalal to slam his behavior as “not okay” to the point that, by the end, she sounded like she was about to cry[.] […]
Unfortunately, not one reporter asked about another media scandal from over the weekend as a black radio host in Philadelphia was fired from WURD for agreeing to interview Biden using pre-written questions sent by his handlers.
For the July 9 briefing, Houck cheered his mancrush for asking the biased right-wing questions he’s all too known for:
While not the barnburner for the ages that we saw on Monday, Tuesday’s White House press briefing was more staid as if someone (or some people) had a chat or talkin’ to, but they weren’t without hardballs for the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre on the Biden regime’s ever-shifting excuses and narratives on the President’s cognitive impairment.
Fox’s Peter Doocy most notably was called on as Jean-Pierre was so tense with other reporters on Monday she avoided her chief sparring partner. Doocy started off with his trademark opening baseline that one might think is an easier question: “Does President Biden commit to serving a full second term if reelected?”
After Jean-Pierre said “yes”, Doocy wanted to know what was up with Biden telling Democratic governors last week that while his health is fine, “it’s just his brain” that’s not working as well anymore and it best functions before 8:00 p.m.
Jean-Pierre tried to pass it off as a joke and no big deal, but Doocy used this to wonder who at the White House would decide to react if “the Pentagon at some point picked up an incoming nuke” at 11 p.m.
Doocy also tried to drill down on the curious journey of Hunter Biden into White House meetings as well as whether the White House isn’t testing Biden for dementia or Parkinson’s Disease because they’d recognize any diagnosis as an immediate death knell to the presidency:
Houck also claimed that “CBS’s Ed O’Keefe was back at it following his explosive throwdown with Jean-Pierre a day earlier and, after someone clearly got to him, toned it down.” Houck offered no evidence to support his claimed that “someone clearly got to” O’Keefe, which makes Houck look a lot like a right-wing conspiracy theorist.
Houck also reviewed Biden’s July 11 press conference by complaining that reporters didn’t sound like Sean Hannity clones in questioning him:
After repeated pushbacks, President Biden’s much-anticipated press conference did little Thursday night to change that his presidency and reelection chances remain in crisis, thanks to a pre-selected list of reporters who gingerly went about his cognitive impairment and, in some cases, strayed completely from the story that’s come to dominate the global body politic.
Biden gave roughly seven-and-a-half minutes of opening remarks and then admitted this would be a farce by revealing he had “been given a list of people to call on here.”
Reuters’s Jeff Mason led off with a tractor-trailer sized question listing off concerns about his presidency from supporters, but no more than that.
[…]A softball press conference wasn’t complete without taxpayer-funded NPR, but it didn’t start off all that well as Biden referred to Asma Khalid as “Hassam”.
Once she corrected him, she brought up the Israel-Hamas war and invited him to state whether “there’s anything you feel personally you wish you would have done differently over the course of the war.”
Her other question came from the hard left: “I remember covering your campaign in 2020, and there was a moment where you referred to yourself as a ‘bridge candidacy’, a transition to a generation of younger leaders. I want to understand what changed?”
Houck’s biased reviews of White House briefings and such these days are laced with edited clips that he had earlier posted on his Twitter/X account that are then embedded into his posts — all the better to keep everything in the MRC’s right-wing bubble.