Fox News’ Peter Doocy may have been gone from the White House briefing room, but he couldn’t have been forgotten.
When the White House correspondent returned to active duty on Monday after taking paternity leave for the birth of his new daughter, Bridget, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre got a reminder of what it was like to be asked tough questions from the media.
She kept her plastered smile on her face for the most part, but it was clear it wasn’t an enjoyable experience.
As a White House transcript shows, the two engaged in some light-hearted banter about Doocy’s arrival to fatherhood with his wife, Fox Business reporter Hillary Vaughn. (“How’s baby Karine?” Jean-Pierre asked), before Doocy got down to business.
His first question was about a report last week by the U.K. Daily Mail that the head of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism was considering recommending Americans limit their beer consumption to two per week.
It’s only a recommendation, as the liberals at Mediaite point out. Still, with the state of the Democratic Party and its war on American necessities (see gas cars, gas-powered stoves, traditional light bulbs, etc.), a diktat from the White House or one of its functionaries wouldn’t surprise anyone.
Jean-Pierre brushed that off, pleading ignorance (which no one would have a problem believing).
Doocy then turned to the more serious matter of Hunter Biden, the notorious son of President Joe Biden.
Check out the rest of the exchange here:
Peter Doocy: “The Secret Service is paying $16,000 a month now to stage near Hunter Biden in Malibu? Who’s paying for that?”
Karine Jean-Pierre: “That’s a question for the Secret Service.”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 28, 2023
Who’s footing the tab for Secret Service protection of Hunter in his Malibu residence, Doocy asked.
Jean-Pierre referred that to the Secret Service.
“The Secret Service is paying $16,000 a month now to stage near Hunter Biden in Malibu. Who’s paying for that?”
Karine Jean-Pierre: “That’s a question for the Secret Service.”
Hunter is selling his “art” to pay to freight on the Southern California rental, Doocy said.
“How can you guarantee that people are not going to be buying this art to gain favor with the president?” he asked.
Jean-Pierre referred that to “Hunter Biden and his representatives.”
Seeing as how that’s not an answer (and there’s a history of Hunter’s art being linked to at least one high-profile presidential appointment), Doocy persisted.
“We know that one of the art buyers got a job from the Biden administration,” he said. “Can you guarantee that there is no quid pro quo?” (That’s a phrase readers might remember from a certain impeachment proceeding against a president not all that long ago.)
“I’m not going to get involved in this,” Pierre said. “That is a question for Hunter Biden’s representatives.”
Actually, it’s very much a question for the White House — but Jean-Pierre pretended otherwise.
“But we know that from a Hunter Biden associate now that he sold the appearance of access to then-Vice President Biden,” Doocy said. “Are you confident that he has stopped doing that?”
Even the question bought into the Democratic line that Hunter Biden made millions only by selling the appearance of access, not something as tawdry as actual access. Access to power is access, period.
Still, Jean-Pierre bobbed her head.
“No, that is — that is your — your — I don’t know — how you’re perceiving that,” she said, incomprehensibly.
Doocy was referring, of course, to the under-oath testimony of former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, who blew the lid off the Bidens’ cover stories when he described how the Hunter could ring up dear old dad during his vice presidency to impress business associates (including Hunter’s Ukrainian paymasters in the Burisma energy company).
“So, this testimony — since the last time that I was in here, Devon Archer talks about how he and Hunter Biden tried to profit off the Biden brand. What is the Biden brand?”
And Jean-Pierre had had enough.
“I’m not going to get into it from here,” she said. “I’m not going to get into it from here. We’re going to move on.”
She then called on another reporter, clearly glad to have Doocy done with.
It was a short exchange — and spectacularly unproductive to any American who actually cares if the nation is being led by a man who sold his office for foreign lucre — but it did show how badly the Washington press corp is letting down the country.
Questions about the Secret Service protection of Hunter aren’t the province of the White House, according to Jean-Pierre.
More penetrating questions about whether the first son is still pimping his paternal origins through the sale of the scrawls he calls “art” are referred to “Hunter Biden and his representatives.”
A direct question about the “Biden brand” that Hunter peddled all over the globe while his father was vice president to President Barack Obama is met with an arrogant stonewall.
Jean-Pierre provided not one answer.
The shame of it is that Doocy is one of the few reporters in the Washington press corps who’s pushing these questions, and pretty much the only one who gets called on regularly. (The New York Post has been the national leader in the Hunter Biden story since it first broke the existence of the laptop that’s spilled so many secrets.)
So while Doocy was on paternity leave, Karine Jean-Pierre had her own time off from his nagging inquiries, with the calm assurance that virtually none of his establishment media colleagues would be pestering her with unseemly curiosity about whether, in fact, the president of the United States is steeped up to his doddering ears in corruption.
Jean-Pierre handled herself well during Monday’s back-and-forth, even joking early in the exchange that “Maybe I didn’t miss you” as Doocy asked about the alcohol recommendation.
But by the end, it was pretty clear that he’d gotten under her skin — and that she hadn’t missed him much at all.
It’s a good bet that the bootlicking balance of the White House press corps didn’t miss him much either.
The rest of the country did, though.
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