New Press Secretary, Same MRC Hate: January-February 2023

The Media Research Center started the new year with the same tired attacks on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, adding "inept" to the insult repertoire.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 4/26/2023

Tuesday marked the first White House press briefing of 2023 and, in her ninth month as press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre continued to stammer and stonewall her way through even the most benign questions. Meanwhile, Fox’s Peter Doocy kept up the heat by wondering whether anyone in the White House could say with a straight face whether “the southern border is secure” and if President Biden lied about not being involved in his family’s corruption.

After some friendly banter about the upcoming due date of Doocy’s wife Hillary Vaughn of Fox Business, Doocy cut to the chase: “Does anybody around here think that the southern border is secure?”

Jean-Pierre didn’t offer anything new and wouldn’t even directly answer the question (though she had used the word “secure” in the past): “What I can tell you is: This is a President who has been working since day one to work on border security, to make immigration a priority. That’s why he put forth a comprehensive immigration reform plan”.

She went onto offer more boilerplate nonsense, lamenting that while Biden has “solutions...Republicans...are doing political stunts”.

It was another week before the MRC wrote up another briefing -- and only because of the emergence of classified documents found at places once frequented by President Biden. And writing up the Jan. 12 briefing, Houck was positively gleeful he didn't have to cite only his biased right-wing buddies asking questions:

Thursday’s White House press conference was as contentious as you would’ve imagined after the announcement that President Joe Biden kept classified documents in the garage at his home in Delaware. The reckless disregard for America’s national security by carelessly leaving classified documents in three different places was such a big story that even the leftist media couldn’t hide it from their viewers and readers.

First out of the gate was Chris Megerian from the Associated Press who asked: “is the President willing to be interviewed by federal investigators about his handling of classified documents?” White House press secretary and diversity hire Karine Jean-Pierre was once again unprepared for any substantive question posed to her: “I’m just not going to get into hypotheticals,” she responded.

Yet Megerian didn’t back down. “It’s not a hypothetical question. There’s an investigation ongoing. Will the President speak to investigators?” he asked.

No matter how many times she’s asked a question, Jean-Pierre proves she just isn’t cut out for the job. After getting another shot at answering the question, Jean-Pierre replied: “You’re asking me about something in the future, and I am telling you that I’m not going to get ahead of what the Department of Justice is going to decide.”

Houck made sure to faithfully document Doocy Time, of course, since portraying Doocy as a briefing-room stud surely helps him get on Fox News:

Last but not least, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy referred to the Biden classified documents scandal as “GarageGate”. Doocy asked: “what is the White House trying to hide?”

“Nothing,” Jean-Pierre bluntly responded.

“Someone gave the President a statement to read on Tuesday that was incomplete at best, misleading at worst. Who?” Doocy asked.

Jean-Pierre claimed Biden “did not know that the records were there,” and that “we take this very seriously and the President does as well.”

Houck made sure to stick "GarageGate" in his headline, presumably hoping to draw the attention of his mancrush.

Houck's writeup of the Jan. 13 briefing purported to identify "the Smartest and Dumbest Questions on the Biden Docs from Friday’s WH Briefing." Of course, the "dumbest" questions were the ones that didn't ask about the documents.

Then, in a Jan. 16 post, Mark Finkelstein laughably complained that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called out Republicans for smearing Jean-Pierre as an incompetent diversity hire:

Spit it out, Scarborough! Instead of making ugly, thinly veiled accusations against Republicans, have the guts to flatly say what you think!

On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough, discussing the performance of Biden spox Karine Jean-Pierre, said:

"When you look at the briefings [on Biden's docs situation], you know, there have been a lot of Republicans who have been critical of Karine Jean-Pierre, of course they have been from the beginning. I'll let people draw their own conclusions as to why. It seems pretty obvious to me."

Gee, wonder what Joe might have been implying? Let's see: Jean-Pierre is celebrated as a black lesbian immigrant from Haiti. Certainly sounds like Scarborough is accusing Republicans of hitting the bigotry trifecta of homophobia, racism, and sexism.

Typically, Mika chimed in to agree with Joe, adding "yeah."

So is there no proof that Jean-Pierre isn't quite up to the press secretary's job?

[...]

The bottom line is that anyone who has followed Jean-Pierre's embarrassing career behind the briefing-room mic knows that she is utterly unfit for the job. And it's not just Republicans who are dissatisfied with her performance. For example here 's a White House reporter for CBS, hardly a conservative outlet, clashing with the press secretary over her obfuscation on Biden's classified documents.

Finkelstein didn't mention that his MRC colleagues have quite literally called Jean-Pierre an incompetent diversity hire, which completely supports what Scarborough said.

For the Jan. 17 briefing, Houck cheered that the "inept" Jean-Pierre was peppered with question from non-right-wing reporters even as he complained that she ignored right-wing outlets:

Tuesday’s White House press briefing marked another installment of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for the inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as, while she ignored journalists from the Daily Caller, Fox News, and Newsmax about President Biden’s classified documents scandal, she ran into a proverbial buzzsaw from outlets such as ABC, the AP, CBS, CBS News Radio, NBC, and NPR with fiery questions about the scandal.

Houck complained further that Jean-Pierre wouldn't take the bait in his writeup of the Jan. 18 briefing, praising not only a current Fox News employee but a former one as well:

As we’ve documented over the last week (see here, here, here and here), Wednesday’s White House press briefing marked yet another tough day at the office for the empty and inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as she kept up her stonewalling on President Biden’s classified documents scandal, while reporters from the likes of the ABC, the Associated Press, CBS, the Fox News Channel, Gray Television, NBC, and even an independent journalist from Angola fired off hardballs.

The AP’s Josh Boak led off the unsuccessful questioning by wondering if Jean-Pierre could give a justification “against visitor logs for” Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home “given the frequency with which [he] works” there, but Jean-Pierre only told him to review statements from the White House counsel and Secret Service.

Formerly with Fox News Radio, Gray Television’s Jon Decker brought the hardball a little later, invoking Biden’s September 60 Minutes interview where he denounced Trump hoarding classified documents as “irresponsible”: “[D]o you think it was proper for President Biden to comment on an ongoing DOJ investigation?”

[...]

After not being called on Tuesday, Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich had a turn and focused on more public press access seeing as how “we’re in sort of an information blackout.” When Jean-Pierre said “no” to whether she’d have someone speak at a briefing, Heinrich tried once more before returning to the previous concern raised about any national security concerns.

Houck did not offer evidence to back up his claim that Jean-Pierre declining not to answer questions made her "inept."

Meanwhile, Tim Graham gleefully touted criticism of Jean-Pierre from anonymous White House reporters (funny how anonymous sources are suddenly credible when they're spouting right-wing narratives, eh, Tim?) as reported by CNN's Oliver Darcy, whom the MRC normally hates and whom Houck himself obsessively denigrates as a "Benedict Arnold" for for the sin of escaping the right-wing media bubble. Graham went on to whine:

Then Darcy added a comical rebuttal from an anonymous White House source in a statement to CNN: "A lot of this sounds more like theater criticism than concern about ability to report facts for the American people’s benefit." Wrong! Reporters in this case are upset over lies about the Biden documents scandal.

[...]

Anyone watching the briefing in recent says [sic] isn't really seeing a question-and-answer session as much as a question-and-stonewall session.

[...]

Can Jean-Pierre last at the White House if this document scandal goes on for months? Surely, Team Biden wishes they had a more talented stonewaller like Jen Psaki to handle the newly angered press corps.

We don't recall anyone at the MRC complaining when their beloved Kayleigh McEnany stonewalled reporters -- but then, her stonewalling was for the conservative cause.

Despite the MRC previously denying that Jean-Pierre was being attacked as a diversity hire, Kevin Tober did exactly that in his writeup of the Jan. 23 briefing:

During Monday’s White House press briefing, a handful of members of the White House press corps continued pressing the incompetent diversity hire, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over the fifth batch of classified documents found in President Joe Biden’s home in Delaware and his regime’s lack of transparency over the scandal.

First out of the gate on this topic was a series of spicy barbs thrown by ABC’s Mary Bruce who asked Jean-Pierre: “You have said though from this podium many, many times over the last two weeks that this President takes the handling of classified material very seriously, and yet we continue to learn about more documents being found and discovered at his home.”

Due to those facts, Bruce asked: “Why should the American people believe that this President takes classified material seriously and the handling of it?”

Of course, Jean-Pierre, like all the prior times she’s been asked, had no real answer. “The American people heard from the President directly on this when he was asked by your colleagues at least twice now about how he sees this process,” she mumbled.

Houck surprisingly whined more about a reporter who dared to deviate from questioning about Biden documents than about Jean-Pierre for the Jan. 24 briefing:

Tuesday afternoon’s White House press briefing brought about plenty more hardballs on President Biden’s classified documents scandal that the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer, but along the way, Angolan reporter Hariana Veras temporarily brought the briefing to a halt with two long stemwinders of leftist commentary demanding gun control.

The next day, Houck once again tried to dunk on Jean-Pierre by praising a national security expert who was brought in, though he too was denigrated as a "crutch":

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre brought in National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby Wednesday afternoon to serve as a crutch amid weeks of hardballs on the Biden classified documents scandal and, sure enough, Kirby ended up exposing Jean-Pierre’s repetitive, tiresome answers by actually providing general explanations for why handling classified information is incredibly serious.

ABC’s MaryAlice Parks went first and cited “bipartisan outrage and frustration over the last few days that there are just more and more disclosures of classified documents showing up in places where they were not supposed to be.”

[...]

Jean-Pierre eventually had a turn, but she went back to shutting down, refusing to answer questions from AP’s Aamer Madhani on whether “all former presidents” should “scrub...their homes and offices” for classified documents and ABC’s MaryAlice Parks on whether the Biden-Harris administration would commit to ensure they’d leave office with no classified documents.

Any excuse to take a shot at Jean-Pierre, it appears.

Houck's hate for Jean-Pierre spewed forth again in his writeup of the Jan. 27 press briefing in which he ranted about the idea that a future White House chief of staff might not be a white male:

Friday’s White House press briefing saw more hardballs about President Biden’s documents scandal, but also plenty of eye-rolling questions lobbying for a female person of color to become White House chief of staff, how Biden processes racial tensions, whether “the culture of policing” has “a comfort with violence and” implants inside the minds of police officers “an entitlement to use violence” as was the case in Memphis with Tyre Nichols.

The Associated Press’s Darlene Superville used her pole position to demand that, with the news that current Chief of Staff Ron Klain is stepping down and replaced by former COVID coordinator Jeff Zients, Biden “commit to choosing a chief of staff who is not white and male” as a Zients successor (if one’s needed).

Why? Well, as she explained, this is “one of the more powerful ones in Washington that has never been held by someone who was not white and male.”

Superville’s cockamamie question fit considering the fact that not only is she an ardent leftist for the Bidens, this came a day after her outlet declared that the word “the” is dehumanizing.

With one of the most outstanding examples of why diversity hires are terrible standing in front of her, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the administration as “the most diverse in history” and listing a slew of spots on a diversity bingo card about the percentage of LGBTQ people, racial minorities, and women on staff.

Wow, Houck really does not like people who aren't white.

February

Houck was less racist (but no less hateful) in his write up of the Feb. 1 press briefing:

Wednesday afternoon marked the week’s first White House press briefing and, for the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, she must have been ever-thankful for the lighter load as, hours earlier, White House Counsel spokesman Ian Sams offered globs of nothingness on the White House driveway.

In light of another CBS News scoop that the FBI had conducted a search of the Penn Biden Center in November and the FBI spent Wednesday searching President Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware beach house, the questions came aplenty from even the liberal media.

Houck left buried in a transcript the fact that officials had found classified documents in the custody of former Vice President Mike Pence -- the discovery of which caused the MRC to lose interest in the whole Biden classified documents thing. He then wrote a second post on the briefing complaining that a reporter asked a question he didn't like:

Voice of America correspondent Anita Powell provided another example Wednesday of how, using our hard-earned tax dollars, government-run media results in a product heavily tilted to the left. During the White House press briefing, Powell used her time to inform Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that “people both inside the United States and outside are...asking, is the United States a racist society.”

While TV providers make decisions about what channels consumers can and can’t have in their lineup while consumers have a choice of which provider (if any) to do business with, Americans don’t have that choice when it comes to their tax dollars being shipped off to left-wing operations masquerading as news outfits.

[...]

Jean-Pierre offered a milquetoast answer, but didn’t endorse that sort of logic spun by race hustlers and woke educators hellbent on planting that idea in the minds of America’s youth.

The anti-Karine hatefest even spread to Mark Finkelstein, who complained in the midst of a Feb. 2 post that was already complaining that former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was allowed on "Morning Joe":

Question: what's an obvious subject that an honest journalist would have raised with former White House spokesman Gibbs? Naturally, it would be Karine Jean-Pierre's pitiful performance, particularly in the context of Biden's classified documents scandal. Trick question! We said "honest" journalist. Scarborough predictably didn't breathe a word with Gibbs about the documents scandal or Jean-Pierre's undeniable incompetence. They needed 12 minutes to praise Obamacare.

In his writeup of the Feb. 6 briefing, Houck surprisingly praised a non-right-wing outlet for stooping to asking Peter Doocy-like questions of Jean Pierre:

Monday’s White House press briefing largely revolved around President Biden’s State of the Union preparations and, as part of that, The New York Times’s Michael Shear surprisingly trotted out a brutal line of questioning that pressed the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on the reality that Democrats didn’t win the midterms because of President Biden but in spite of him.

Shear started by having Jean-Pierre restate her premise: “I think you made the assertion that the reason that there wasn’t a red wave or the reason that the elections and the midterms were more successful than many people thought they would be for Democrats was because of the President. Is that — that’s a fair [assumption]?”

Having walked into his trap, Shear dropped the hammer by citing the findings of an NBC poll last month:

Is Biden honest and trustworthy? 34 percent, yes; 48 percent, no. Ability to handle a crisis: 30 percent — 32 percent, yes; 49 percent, no. Competent and effective: 31 percent, yes; 49 percent, no. Has the necessary mental and physical health to be President: 28 percent, yes; 54 percent, no. Uniting the country: 23 percent, yes; 50 percent, no.

Shear rebutted any notion this was an isolated poll because “versions of that had been repeated in poll after poll, survey after survey since the midterm elections and before.”

Add in the fact that more than half of Democrats don’t want Biden to run for reelection in 2024 and “more Democrats don’t want President Biden...than Republicans don’t want President Trump” and you have an ugly picture.

Houck spewed even more hate at Jean-Pierre in a Feb. 13 post personally attacking her for failing to speak perfect English:

The ever-inept White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre joined MSNBC on Sunday morning for a softball sit-down with leftist Sunday Show host Jonathan Capehart where, despite his gentle questions, Jean-Pierre still struggled to use complete sentences and even made up a new name for Canada.

Capehart harmlessly started by saying he wanted to “talk about the thing that was shot out of the sky over Canada” and if she could both “tell us about it” and state whether they’re things “Americans should be worried about.”

[...]

Capehart followed up about why the U.S. military fired the missile over Canada, which led to Jean-Pierre dubbing Canada as “Canadia”:

As if Houck ever spoke perfect English all the time.

Houck used his writeup of the Feb. 14 briefing to hype a particularly dumb line of questioning from a right-wing reporter (whose ideology he did not identify, though he insists on labeling "liberal" reporters):

Tuesday’s White House press briefing featured some strong questions and softballs (such as one from a Polish radio reporter about President Biden’s Valentines Day plans), but the penultimate exchange was the most intriguing as Newsmax’s James Rosen pressed Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on whether the administration believes certain mediums of communication are weaker than others for Biden and whether he’s “woke.”

Always shrewd, Rosen began by telling her “there is obviously a variety of settings the President can employ: set pieces, impromptu remarks, teleprompter, no teleprompter, et cetera, et cetera” and, since “you work on his communications team,” it was worth asking how she views Biden’s ability to communicate in any and all forums.

[...]

And on wokeism, Rosen stated “[o]ne of the most prominent themes...from both elected Republicans and candidates has to do with what is called ‘wokeism,’” which “reminds me of what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said about obscenity — that he couldn’t define it, but he knew it when he saw it.”

Given the talk of “woke capitalism” and a “woke military,” Rosen said he thought it would be fitting to level “a threshold question” “Is President Biden woke?”

Jean-Pierre refused to answer and instead dropped a word salad about “what the President cares about and what’s important to” him, which doesn’t involve “Republicans...creating political stunts” and ensuring economic growth and the national deficit from the GOP.

Rosen interjected: “So you wouldn’t describe him as ‘woke?’”

Jean-Pierre again refused to answer, claiming he’d “work with Republicans on how we are going to continue to deliver” for the American people, but would fight them tooth and nail on entitlements because “they” as a whole “want to cut Social Security” and “cut Medicare” (even though neither of those things are true).

Apparently, Houck's idea of an "always shrewd" person is one who effectively got fired from his previous employer for sexual misconduct.

Houck then got lazy again and took the rest of the month off from his anti-Karine hate campaign.