Topic: Media Research Center
Bill D'Agostino test-drove a new line of attack on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a July 5 article:
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been widely criticized for her inability to field even basic inquiries about the scandals plaguing President Biden. Despite the President’s January 2021 pledge to “bring transparency and truth back to the government,” Jean-Pierre has failed to answer practically every such question she’s faced.
MRC analysts examined official White House transcripts of every briefing Jean-Pierre conducted between January 1 and June 30, 2023, recording every time she was asked about one of the scandals facing President Biden — specifically, the corruption allegations being investigated by House committees, and his mishandling of classified documents from his time as Vice President. Analysts found that while reporters asked Jean-Pierre 252 questions about either of these topics, only six received a definitive answer.
Of those 252 total questions, 217 (86%) were about the President’s misplaced classified documents, only five of which (just 2%) were concretely answered. The remaining 35 questions (14%) dealt with the various allegations of corruption against the President, with only one receiving a substantive response.
D'Agostino huffily concluded:
During the last administration, clips of White House correspondents grilling press secretaries about the latest Trump scandal were commonplace on evening newscasts. Now that they’ve disappeared following the decline in coverage of the document scandal, it’s a wonder why reporters even bother to raise such issues during the briefings.
D'Agostino conveniently forgets the actual history of press secretaries in the Trump White House. Its press secretaries once went more than a year without holding a briefing, and the final one, Kayleigh McEnany, was notorious for dodging questions and being mostly propaganda pieces that the MRC absolutely loved (and she also refused to do her job in the final weeks of the administration following the Capitol riot).So it's more than a little hypocritical for D'Agostino to criticize Jean-Pierre for not answering questions when his MRC cheered McEnany for doing the same thing.
Curtis Houck, meanwhile, spent his writeup of the July 5 briefing complaining that Jean-Pierre, yes, wouldn't answer questions involving the right-wing outrage du jour:
Whether it’s the Biden documents scandal, allegations of Biden family corruption, or the latest twist in Hunter Biden’s life of ruin to name a few, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has consistently stuck to the theme of playing dumb when faced with even gentle questions from the liberal White House press corps. Such was the case Wednesday concerning the bag of cocaine found in the West Wing.
In the case of the pedestrian, the AP’s Josh Boak had the first question on it: “[P]er the intrigue over the holiday: Can you give any more details on where the Secret Service found cocaine in the West Wing and how it got there?”
This time, Jean-Pierre said “this is under the purview of the Secret Service” except to reiterate President Biden and his “family were not here this weekend” as well as the excuse that “this was discovered is a heavily traveled area where many...West Wing visitors come through.”
Reuters’s Steve Holland followed up to no avail, “Has the President said, ‘Hey, let’s get to the bottom of what happened here’ with the cocaine?”
Jean-Pierre didn’t budge, kicking the can to the Secret Service.
Tim Graham decided to tag Jean-Pierre with a disgusting toilet reference, sleazily referring to her as "Latrine Jean-Pierre" in the headline of his July 7 column:
White House briefings in the Biden years are often sleepy meetings compared to the Jim Acosta shriek-fests we remember under Trump. Joe Biden pledged he would be so much nicer to the press corps. He promised to “bring transparency and truth back to the government.” But the press is much nicer to him than the other way around.
Biden provides far less access than Trump did. He avoids press conferences and one-on-one interviews like the plague. He only surfaces for softball interviews with Nicolle Wallace or Drew Barrymore – and you could be forgiven if you’re not sure which interviewer was tougher, the cable “news” host or the movie star from 50 First Dates.
[...]
It’s common for press secretaries to defer tough questions to other departments or agencies, but Jean-Pierre is accomplishing some kind of Olympic-level record of blowing off questions. While many question her competence at the podium, her denials are clearly doing exactly what Team Biden wants – to bluster past the scandal questions without answering them. They’d like to pretend there’s no such thing as a Biden scandal.
Graham, like D'Agostino, failed to disclose that the Trump White House went more than a year without holding a briefing or mention McEnany's legacy of dodging questions.
In his writeup of the July 7 briefing, Houck cheered a right-wing reporter advancing a right-wing narrative:
Friday marked only the second White House press briefing of the week in which reporters could question Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the bag of cocaine found in the West Wing. While 13 reporters pressed Jean-Pierre on Wednesday about it, only one would on Friday (and a second to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan).
This was despite the fact that the bag of cocaine’s tale had evolved from seemingly blaming tourists to an area enveloping tourists, staff, and cubbies near the Situation Room. New York Post’s Caitlin Doornbos asked whether “the cocaine belonged to the Biden family,” which drew a hissy fit from Jean-Pierre that “ask[ing] that...is actually incredibly irresponsible.”
A relative newbie to the Briefing Room, Doornbos first wondered what was up with (the cartoonish partisan) Biden aide Andrew Bates ducking a question Thursday about the cocaine probe during an Air Force One gaggle by citing the Hatch Act.
That aside, she cut to the chase: “Can you say once and for all whether or the not the cocaine belonged to the Biden family?”
Houck went on to complain that "nearly two dozens questions [sic] wereallegedly "skipped over" by Jean-Pierre that allegedly didn't need to wait for Secret Service clearance; needless to say, he was silent on his beloved McEnany's history of dodging questions.
Graham had D'Agostino on his July 7 podcast to discuss Jean-Pierre's question-dodging, while not similarlyh calling out the Trump administration's question evasion, in part by not holding press briefings at all.
