Curtis Houck finally conceded that Fox News reporter Peter Doocy is acting “adversarial” in White House press briefings — though he still won’t concede that Doocy is a right-wing hack — in his Doocy-fluffing writeup of the April 15 briefing:
With President Biden on the road for the next few days, the White House press corps had to get their hardballs in while they could on Monday. Fox’s Peter Doocy, as always, had the adversarial questions the rest wouldn’t ask. This time, he went around and around with John Kirby over Iran predictably not being intimidated by President Biden’s simple demand to “don’t” fire missiles and drones at Israel.
“John, has President Biden considered maybe beefing up the public Iran posture to be more than just one word,” Doocy began, to which Kirby said amid cross-talk they should “talk about what we did.”
“[H]e said ‘don’t’ and they did it anyway. So, now what,” he asked.
Doocy largely let Kirby drone on for over a minute about how Biden’s “don’t” plea was actually a smashing success[.] […]
Doocy then pivoted to the ongoing issue (raised repeatedly, such as here, here, here, here, here, and here by his colleague, Jacqui Heinrich) of the U.S. freezing Iranian assets: “Now that we know that the Iranians do not listen to President Biden’s public warnings, Is there any regret here about unfreezing billions of dollars for Iranian leaders during the President’s administration?”
Kirby played dumb, wondering “what unfreezing are you talking about” and thus lead to more back-and-forth between the two with Kirby admitting he did know what Doocy was referring to and, rest assured, the administration was monitoring the haul to make sure it didn’t end up in the wrong hands
[…]Doocy Time wrapped with a question about why in the world did Biden leave for Delaware then come back to the White House since, in crises past, Biden wouldn’t change plans and the press team would argue Biden “can be the President from anywhere.”
Kirby didn’t engaged except to claim he came back because “shortly after arriving — we got better, firmer intelligence and information about the — the specific timing of what we expected to be this Iranian attack”.
While there may not have been any more briefings for Houck to spew hate at Jean-Pierre over, that role was filled by Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, who was outraged that she was [checks notes] singing and dancing during one briefing. Mandelburg played an out-of-context clip of Jean-Pierre in her hate-filled April 16 “Woke of the Weak” podcast, huffing that “this is apparently normal behavior from the White House, even when a war is percolating in the Middle East.” She failed to mention that Jean-Pierre was actually singing the theme song from ’80s sitcom “A Different World” was and joined by cast members from the show, who happened to be visiting the White House that day as part of its tour of historically Black colleges to raise money for scholarships.
If that wasn’t enough, Mandelburg went low-rated far-right channel One America News to rage further about it. Host Alison Steinberg whined, “Oooh, this is just nauseating,” and Mandelburg ranted in agreement:
You know, I love to have a good time, have a fun time, but there’s a time and a place for that, and work place is not really the place for that. And seeing that video really — if they were really great at their job, if Karine Jean-Pierre was an amazing press secretary and just did a great job and was really clear on what the Biden administration was doing, that would be one thing. I would give her a little bit of slack. But the fact that she really never has any clue what is going on and just, again, regurgitates the same leftist talking points that she reads from her little binder, it goes to show that clearly they need to do a little more studying.
When has the MRC ever given slack to any press secretary for a Democratic president? Never, as far as we can recall. And we don’t recall Mandelburg being angry that Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany regurgitated right-wing talking points from her little binder.
Again, neither Mandelburg nor Steinberg mentioned the pertinent fact that Jean-Pierre was joined by the cast of “A Different World” raising money for HBCU scholarships. It should also be noted that even Houck — a rabid hater of Jean-Pierre — didn’t find this remarkable enough to comment on during his nasty briefing writeups.