NEW ARTICLE: New Press Secretary, Same MRC Hate: The Finale
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck spent the final few months of the Biden presidency as usual: spewing hate at Karine Jean-Pierre while fluffing Peter Doocy and other right-wing reporters.
The Media Research Center’s Curtis Houck spent the entirety of the Biden administration spewing hate at his two press secretaries, Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre, for doing their jobs — and he concluded this duty in the same way during the final three months of Biden’s term. For the first White House press conference after the election, on Nov. 7, Houck was all in on juvenile taunting (and, of course, fluffing of biased Fox News reporters):
With no White House press briefing since October 30, Thursday’s briefing was the first since Tuesday’s general election and, with the massive red wave yielding a Trump presidency and possibly a Republican Congress, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a room of reporters (ostensibly most being supporters) full of questions about the administration’s reaction to this thorough rebuke.
Starting at the end of the briefing, Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich patiently sat and heard Jean-Pierre’s only definitive excuse be that pandemic fallout was why Democrats were shellacked, so she had enough.
After a follow-up to a question from The Washington Post’s Matt Viser about any chance President Biden would pardon son Hunter, Heinrich read a viral tweet from Congressman Richie Torres (D-NY) before wondering: “[I]s the administration, campaign, the Democratic Party, looking at the pandemic as the cause rather than — is that easier than looking in the mirror?”
Jean-Pierre doubled down on “respecting” what voters decided and that “incumbents” across the Group of Seven countries have “pretty consistently” been blamed for the pandemic upheavals.
[…]
Jean-Pierre offered a non-committal answer and promise for a peaceful transition, which led Heinrich to interject: “So, you’re saying that leading by example is the message to people who are fearful based on what the messaging was about the stakes of what would happen?”
Jean-Pierre wasn’t amused and told Heinrich she was “just twisting everything around and that’s really unfair” since she had “been standing here trying to be very respectful to what happened the last two nights — uh — two nights ago, being respectful.”
Houck touted the non-right-wing reporters who sounded like they were working for Fox News:
Reuters’s Jeff Mason made it even more personal for Jean-Pierre and her aides, noting the “criticism in the last couple of days directly addressed at President Biden for some of the questions that have already been asked — running in the first place or not stepping aside faster.”
“Some of that criticism has also been directed at his team and the advisors around him for advising him to do what he did. Can you address that criticism,” he wondered.
Interestingly, Jean-Pierre seemed to tout Biden’s rise to the presidency as a backdoor way of saying yes to previous questions about whether Biden would have won this time:
For the Nov. 12 briefing, it was Doocy-fluffing time:
In the second White House press briefing since the presidential election and a day before the surreal Oval Office sit-down between President Biden and President-Elect Trump, Fox’s Peter Doocy drew Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s ire when he wonddered [sic] “how awkward was” Tuesday’s lunch between Biden and Vice President Harris at the White House.
Jean-Pierre pretended to stammer in confusion as Doocy tried to explain himself: “I don’t even understand. Why would — why would it be awkward? Why would it be awkward? Why would — why would you — but why would — why would you characterize it as awkward? They have regular lunches. Uh — they meet and talk regularly.”
Amid all that hoopla, Doocy expanded: “Because — because the President got squeezed out for her and then she kept him at arm’s length, and then she lost and now, she’s back.”
Houck weirdly failed to document the Nov. 13 briefing — perhaps because Doocy was more interested in making snide remarks instead of acting like a journalist. Houck was back for the Nov. 21 briefing with more Jean-Pierre-bashing and a different Fox activist reporter to fluff:
The White House press briefing returned Thursday for the first time in eight days and, along with questions about the zero interactions between the press and outgoing President Biden during his six-day trip to South America, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre embarrassed herself with meandering, stumbling answers about both her successor Karoline Leavitt in the second Trump administration and layoffs inside the Democratic Party.
[…]
Fox’s Mark Meredith closed things out with two stinging topics. First, he brought up a possible case of the Biden-Harris regime working to preemptively undermine a Trump-Vance border policy:
[…]
Jean-Pierre wasn’t amused by Meredith’s final question: “Does it look bad for the Vice President to go Hawaii while DNC staffers are just wondering what they’re going to do for work?”
A disgusted Jean-Pierre packed her binder, telling him that Harris “deserves some time to be with her family and to have some down time” after having “worked very hard over the last four years[.]”
“Good for her. Good for her,” she concluded.
And that was it for the month.
Slacking off in December
Jean-Pierre may have held only four White House press briefings in December, but Houck bothered to write about only two of them — then whined that she was slacking on the job. Here’s how his grievance-filled writeup for the Dec. 6 briefing (which took his three days to do) started:
On Friday afternoon, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre held the first White House briefing in 15 days and the first since President Biden went back on his word of denying he’d pardon his son, Hunter. Needless to say, the press corps came prepared to express their disgust with Jean-Pierre and the President making them look like fools and undermining their aura of respect for the rule of law.
Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre wanted nothing to do with Fox’s Peter Doocy, leaving the next Doocy Time for another day.
The Associated Press’s Zeke Miller went first with the pious take about Jean-Pierre promising during her first briefing to being honest with reporters and the American people cut against what happened here. Thus, he invited her to “explain to us, the American people, really why the information that you provided turned out not to be true.”
Of course, he avoided the l-word of lying:
Houck’s obsession over the pardon continued:
CBS’s Ed O’Keefe was at the back-end of the briefing and brought the heat, trying again on whether Biden has apologized to Jean-Pierre:
O’Keefe’s follow-up was dead on that Doocy would have probably asked: “One of the other things he often says is that voters should trust his, ‘word as a Biden.’ Should they still? This was a pretty big, defiant public pronouncement by him that he wasn’t going to do this.”
[…]
Jean-Pierre reemphasized Biden still believes “in the American justice system,” but O’Keefe wasn’t buying any of this nonsense and actually argued President Biden and President-Elect Trump are now at a point where they seem to hold similar views of the justice system (click “expand”):
Houck refused to further discuss the fact that Trump has been actively avoiding accountability for the crimes he has committed.
Houck’s focus on the Dec. 11 briefing was, of course, to gush over a biased Fox News correspondent who wasn’t Peter Doocy:
Thursday’s White House press briefing featured longtime Democratic national security flack John Kirby for what’ll likely be one of his final times at the podium and he had quite the task to insist the Biden administration rejects that a hostile foreign actor or UFOs are behind the drones harassing residents in New Jersey, New York, and now surrounding states, but they still have no clue who’s behind them. Thankfully, Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich wasn’t amused by his dodges.
Like her colleague Peter Doocy, Heinrich kept it basic to start out:
[…]
In the above video, her first follow-up cut to the chase of the insanity: “Basically, with what you’re looking at, how can you credibly tell people that there is no public safety threat, there’s no national security threat that there’s no reason to believe that a foreign government is involved?”
Kirby maintained “[t]here’s a lot more work to be done and we’re working closely with state and local authorities to gain more information,” but nothing has indicated “any national security or malicious intent or criminal activity.”
Heinrich wasn’t amused, telling Kirby that Democrats representing the affected areas have told members of their own party that, in Heinrich’s words, this hasn’t “been handled with a sense of urgency” and wondered if there’s been any warnings to relevant military sites.
When Kirby also ducked this and said there hadn’t been, Heinrich fact-checked him:
We though the MRC believed all fact-checkers are inherently liberal. Houck also edited out any reference to Jean-Pierre from the briefing, even though she did take questions during part of it.
Houck ignored two other briefings, on Dec. 11 (which featured Jared Bernstein of the Council of Economic Advisers) and Dec. 20. Apparently, he was running out of insults to hurl at Jean-Pierre.
One final fit
Houck kicked off the final month of his bitter, partisan war on Jean-Pierre with a writeup of the Jan. 3 press briefing that slobbered over a biased Fox News reporter asking a biased question designed to attack Biden and dismiss the threat of white supremacy:
The Biden White House snuck in a press briefing Friday afternoon amid the House speaker vote hullabaloo and it had the predictable tone of senioritis with networks reaching deep into their bench for correspondents and producers willing to listen to Karine Jean-Pierre stammer and stumble her way through process questions about Biden’s final days in office, Biden blocking the sale of U.S. Steel, and the Islamic terror attack in New Orleans.
Thankfully, Fox’s Lucas Tomlinson came ready with a probing question, but Jean-Pierre chose to ignore it:
[…]
The comments in question Tomlinson was referring? Here was Biden on 1, 2021 in Tulsa, Oklahoma: “According to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not Al-Qaeda, white supremacists.”
Biden also made the claim on October 21, 2021 at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial in Washington D.C.: “According to the United States intelligence community, domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland.”
He also said this on May 13, 2021 at Howard University’s commencement: “The most dangerous threat to our homeland is white supremacy.”
Houck then declared: “Most of the questions concerned Biden’s block of Japanese steelmaker Nippon from buying U.S. Steel (which had bipartisan support, including from Trump). NPR’s Franco Ordoñez asked two important questions about whether Biden would feel responsible if U.S. Steel turns around and lays off workers and/or shutters factories.” But if Trump also supports blocking the sale, why wouldn’t he be held responsible as well?
Houck’s writeup of the Jan. 13 briefing served up more slobbering, this time of his favorite biased reporter and longtime mancrush, Peter Doocy:
Monday was likely the second-to-last White House press briefing and it largely focused on National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan previewing what one could argue was President Biden’s foreign policy farewell address. Thankfully, there was still time for the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre, including possibly the final tussle with Fox’s Peter Doocy (aka Doocy Time).
Doocy and Jean-Pierre recognized the moment with some chuckles (and Doocy’s face eventually turning red). Eventually, the video below did turn to policy with a classic Doocy question that was short and to the point. The topic? Who’s the leader of the Democratic Party:
[…]
He reacted to Jean-Pierre’s dodge with a simple follow-up: “So, no leader of the party?” When she said “that’s not what I said,” Doocy laid out the logic: “Well, it’s President Biden and it’s not Vice President Harris and there’s no chair of the DNC, so it’s nobody!”
Jean-Pierre doubled down that she doesn’t believe that, but rather it’s difficult to tell what will transpire between January 2025 and 2028. Doocy’s final question addressed something from a Friday comment Biden made to reporters: “And President Biden says that he’s not going to be out of sight, out of mind. But isn’t that what voters basically said that they wanted — is him gone?”
Jean-Pierre seemed disgusted with his reality, instead telling Doocy that Biden “deserves some respect” and he “has served that long and does it from their heart and soul because they believe this country deserves so much more, they believe that the American people deserve more and has worked day in and day out.”
Of course, neither Doocy nor Houck believe Biden deserves any respect.
For the final briefing on Jan. 15, Houck mocked Jean-Pierre for getting emotional:
Wednesday afternoon brought us the final Biden White House press briefing and, by her own count, the 306th featuring the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. It featured Jean-Pierre emotionally patting herself on the back, plenty of unanswered questions (mostly stemming from the monumental Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal), the final Jacqui Time, and even Jean-Pierre doing her own impression of the shrug emoji.
[…]
It began with remarks about the Middle East and then a six-minute-plus speech from Jean-Pierre reflecting on her time in the administration, helping President Biden restore the “norm” of briefings since his administration “understand[s] that a free press is a cornerstone of our nation and that the job you do questioning leaders and holding the powerful accountable is important[.]”
She went onto offer DEI-tinged lines about hopefully having been only the first “barrier-breaking” press secretary, thanking press staff over the last four years by name, and choking up talking about her family and daughter:
Houck also sucked up to another one of his favorite biased Fox News correspondents:
After CBS News Radio’s Linda Kenyon got Jean-Pierre to say she hasn’t talked to Leavitt, the final tussle with Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich commenced, starting with the hostage deal and followed up by wondering what the point of her coming out to speak on the deal was if she couldn’t provide more information.
[…]
Seeming to allude to the Kirby icing, she said reporters “were under the impression that there were folks here in the building who had answers,” but alas, it wasn’t happening.
Heinrich also gave it the old college try on the credit talk. At one point, Heinrich said she wondered why Jean-Pierre wouldn’t “just say your view, which seems to be that Trump gets no credit.”
Houck left his final insult in an embedded tweet:
The final moments of the last ever WH briefing with KJP has a fitting end – an unanswered question, a literal shrug emoji, and reporters chuckling that she’d tell them privately what she thinks about @KarolineLeavitt….
To which he added: “How fitting an end for both Jean-Pierre and the corporate liberals in the seats.” Um, isn’t Fox News a corporation? Houck made sure not to mention of how things in the briefing room ended in the first Trump administration — Kayleigh McEnany effectively abandoned her job by refusing to hold press briefings in the final two weeks of the first Trump administration so she wouldn’t have to talk about the Capitol riot, which one might say was also a fitting end.
But Houck still wasn’t done with the insults. A Jan. 17 post — which engaged in childish name-calling by calling Jean-Pierre a “petty prick” in the headline — repeated anonymous speculation from the right-wing New York Post:
On Thursday afternoon, the great Steven Nelson of the New York Post put more meat on the bone regarding reports bumbling, fumbling, stumbling White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre barred national security advisor and spokesman John Kirby from speaking to reporters about the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal because she didn’t want arguably the only adult in the Biden team from stealing her thunder.
Nelson has been one of only a few journalists (plus Axios) to actually report on this one-sided feud with Jean-Pierre repeatedly having been allegedly loathe to work with him.
None of Nelson’s sources went on the record — presumably to obscure the fact that they are all biased right-wingers with an agenda and an ax to grind. We thought the MRC hated anonymous sources for that very reason.
Houck also wrote a Jan. 15 post claiming to document “The 18 Best Battles, Hardballs, Smackdowns From the Biden White House Press Briefings.” To nobody’s surprise, at least 11 of them featured Doocy.
We will presume that Houck will not be so praiseworthy of Doocy if he’s as biased and hostile toward new White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt than he was toward Jean-Pierre and Psaki. Then again, he was being paid to be hostile to them — and not to be hostile toward Leavitt.
____
Curtis Houck’s campaign of hate toward Karine Jean-Pierre:
July 2022 | August 2022 } September 2022 | October-December 2022 | January-February 2023 | March 2023 } April-May 2023 | June-July 2023 | August-September 2023 |October-November 2023 | December 2023-January 2024 | January-February 2024 | March 2024 | April 2024 | May-June 2024 | July 2024 | August-October 2024