Curtis Houck spent his writeup of the Oct. 4 White House press briefing complaining that 1) President Biden purportedly took too long to pay a visit to the briefing room, and 2) non-right-0wing reporterse didn’t go all Peter Doocy on him:
On Friday, President Biden made his first appearance in the White House Briefing Room with only three and a half months left in office after years of calls from reporters across the political spectrum.
Sure, he only took questions for just over eight minutes, but the press corps made sure to throw this unique opportunity away with a combination of open-ended foreign policy queries and softballs, including one from taxpayer-funded NPR dialing up the fear porn about post-election violence.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre picked the reporters herself, so that was the first indication this would be a joke.
The Associated Press’s Josh Boak went first because that’s how these things go (or risk serious hissy fits, like Sean Spicer learned) and put this pathetic question on the tee for Ol’ Joe: “Florida Senator Marco Rubio described today’s jobs report as having fake numbers. What do you make of that and how worried are you that many Americans are hearing that the jobs numbers aren’t real?”
Biden repeatedly quipped about how he had to choose words carefully (or he’d presumably get in trouble), but said the jobs numbers are “real” and “sincere” and also par for the course for “MAGA Republicans” calling “anything…they don’t like…fake.”
Why is it “pathetic” for Boak to point out that Rubio is falsely accusing Biden of manufacturing fake employment numbers? Houck doesn’t explain — he’s apparently just mad that Rubio’s lie was called out.
NPR’s Tamara Keith stepped up to the plate and, instead of asking about those affected by Hurricane Helene, the hundreds dead, and the growing uproar surrounding the federal response, she wondered about election legitimacy and post-election violence:
[…]Keith doubled down on the MSNBC-speak: “Are you making any preparations, getting security briefings related to domestic security?”
Biden shot back that he “always[s] gets those briefings.”
Houck closed by sneering, “How incestuous” — as if his employer doesn’t have incestuous relationships with right-wing media to make sure it never faces any remotely challenging questions.
In his writeup of the Oct. 7 briefing, Houck did some serious mancrushing on his favorite biased Fox News reporter after his misinformation was called out, with an added reappearance of the DeSantis Defense League:
On Monday with millions of Americans still recovering from catastrophic devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and more preparing this week for Hurricane Milton, numerous White House correspondents chose to engage in childish and maniacal bashing with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) with false claims about him ignoring calls from Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
In contrast, Fox’s Peter Doocy went to bat for Americans who don’t have time for the petty pontificating and bellyaching from Washington D.C. and wondered why the Biden administration triumphantly announced $157 million in foreign aid for Lebanon as the terror group that runs the country — Hezbollah — wars with Israel.
“[O]n this issue of funding, the administration has money to send to Lebanon without Congress coming back, but Congress does have to come back to approve money to send to people in North Carolina. Do I have that right,” Doocy asked.
Jean-Pierre insisted Harris and President Biden have “had a — a robust, whole-of-government response to [Helene] with “more than $200 million — that we have directly put towards survivors here for the di- — for disaster help, and that’s because of this President’s commitment to make sure that we are there for communities that are impacted” plus “more than 1,500 federal — federal folks on the ground to help.”
She added such invocations of Lebanese aid is “disinformation, misinformation,” and “dangerous.”
Doocy didn’t take too kindly to this nonsense:
[…]But President Biden is fond of saying, “Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value.” If he has got money for people in Lebanon right now, without Congress having to come back, what does it say about his values that there is not enough money right now for people in North Carolina who need it? That’s not misinformation.
Jean-Pierre drew a look of utter bafflement and an “excuse me” from Doocy when she replied everything he said was “misinformation: “Wait. No, that is. Wait, your whole — your whole premise of the question is misinformation, sir.”
[…]Jean-Pierre put the onus on Congress for more money being needed to care for American citizens: “Peter, this is nothing new. Congress comes together. They provide money — millions of dollars for disaster relief. We’re asking them to do the job that they have been doing for some time.”
Doocy countered he was “reading from a letter that President Biden sent to” the leaders of each parties in Congress saying FEMA needed more funding.
“The President’s letter is not misinformation. Would you agree,” he asked.
Jean-Pierre wasn’t stuck to her script, saying “the way you’re asking me the question is misinformation” before going on with Doocy torching her for choosing to merely “call a question that you don’t like ‘misinformation’” as “[t]hat’s very unfair”[.]
Houck then returned to DeSantis blowing off Harris:
Going back to the DeSantis bashing, the Vice President doesn’t sign off on disaster declarations or be the person to give FEMA permission to release aid and surge assistance to the region. Rather, the President does, but the liberal media have a candidate (Harris) whom they’re working to elect and paint as a Boss Lady.
Houck foujnd another right-wing reporter to fluff in his writeup of the Oct. 9 briefing:
With much of the national media ghoulishly obsessing over fringe conspiracy theories about Hurricane Milton and Russia-related claims from Bob Woodward’s new book, Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann actually did his job Wednesday in pressing White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on claims in the Woodward book about Ukraine and President Biden reportedly regretful he made Merrick Garland Attorney General.
A few hours later, Wegmann asked President Biden about the wholly manufactured news cycle claiming Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is ignoring Vice President Kamala Harris (who has no power over any aspect of the federal response).
That question came after Biden spent much of his time blaming Trump for alleged misinformation and Harris’s Fatal Attraction-like obsession with bashing DeSantis:
[…]Rewinding to mid-afternoon’s White House briefing, AP’s Aamer Madhani, The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg used part of their question time to invoke claims from Woodward’s book that then-President Trump sent then-scarce COVID-19 tests to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and has spoken with him numerous times since leaving the White House.
While he also went down this rabbit hole, NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez also asked about Biden allegedly having used expletives to describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Wegmann wasn’t having any of this.
In contrast, he wanted to know why Jean-Pierre engaged with the unsubstantiated claims about Trump and Putin when she usually doesn’t “often speculate about hypotheticals.”
A claim and vetted by a respected reporter with a track record of accuracy is not a “hypothetical,” and neither Wegmann nor Houck offered any reason to distrust the claim since it’s well within what we know Trump is capable of doing. Houck also didn’t explain why it’s “ghoulish” to point out that Donald Trump and other right-wingers are deliberately spreading misinformation about FEMA hurricane relief.