New Press Secretary, Same MRC Hate: August-October 2024
Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck's routine continued throughout the presidential campaign: spewing hate at Karine Jean-Pierre and slobbering over Peter Doocy.
Once again, the Media Research Center’s Curtis Houck took the lazy approach to monitoring White House press briefings in August — even though there only five briefings that month, Houck could be bothered to write about only two of them, and he split the work on one of them with another MRC writer who obsessed over a single question. In writing about the Aug. 12 briefing, Gabriela Pariseau raged that a reporter pointed out Donald Trump’s history of lies and misinformation:
A Washington Post journalist had the gall to ask the Biden-Harris administration what it could do to block former President Donald Trump’s speech from being heard by the voting public.
Noting Trump’s scheduled interview with X owner Elon Musk Monday, Washington Post White House reporter Cleve Wootson whined that the former president might utter so-called “misinformation.” Seemingly oblivious to the First Amendment, which allows his occupation to exist, Wootson asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “What role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of [misinformation] or sort of intervening in that?”
Wootson attempted to dress up his anti-free speech question by framing it as an all-American perspective. “I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It’s a — you know, it’s an America issue,” he claimed.
Jean-Pierre responded, noting that the White House has spoken about “misinformation” and the alleged responsibilities of social media companies to stop it “many times.” But fortunately, she had no information to share and claimed neither her team nor the president were tracking Trump’s interviews for alleged misinformation.
Pariseau didn’t explain why Trump should be allowed to lie and mislead without that misinformation being called out.
In his writeup of that same briefing, Houck rehashed that question while making sure to fawn over his favorite biased right-wing reporters:
It was textbook case of contrasts during Monday’s White House press briefing as, on the one hand, one of The Washington Post’s lead Kamala Harris bootlickers called for the federal government — the Biden-Harris regime — to directly interfere in the 2024 election and censor Donald Trump and X’s Elon Musk and a softball from USA Today about Biden being wistful ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
On the other, there were reporters like Fox’s Peter Doocy, Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann, and Fox Business’s Edward Lawrence who pressed the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre on the border crisis, Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Harris stealing Trump’s policy idea on ending taxes on tips, respectively.
Starting with The Post, reporter Cleve T. Wootson Jr. had the gall to kvetch that Trump’s interview with X’s Musk was an example of how “misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue,” but “I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue.”
He then actually wondered what the White House would do to thwart “the spread of that” or even “intervene”:
He too failed to explain why Trump’s lies should never be corrected. But back to his usual right-wing mancrushing:
Thankfully, a few reporters in the room actually still do their jobs on a consistent basis when a liberal administration is in power.
Doocy Time kicked off with a back-and-forth about whether President Biden is “mad” at former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for playing a lead role in shoving him out:
[…]
Doocy then pivoted to a question that Jean-Pierre pretended to not understand, forcing him to restate it three times:
[H]ow long have you guys known that Vice President Harris does not think President Biden is doing a good job at the border?…Well, she’s now promising to hire thousands more border agents than there are bow under President Biden….How long have you guys known that Vice President Harris does not think that President Biden is effective with his border policy?
Jean-Pierre bemoaned Doocy “making a huge jump” in “assuming” “something” that doesn’t exist.
“She has a campaign ad where she is saying they need more Border Patrol agents. If President Biden is doing such a good job, why do they need any more [agents],” he added.
Of course, she punted by blaming Republicans for not taking President Biden’s border deal.
Doocy also worked in a third topic. This time? The mysterious Las Vegas Police radio conversations on July 17 when Biden fell ill.
That last topic was a right-wing conspiracy theory; a hospital in Las Vegas was put on standby, but there was never any medical emergency. It says a lot about Doocy that he bought into a bogus partisan claim — and about Houck that he wouldn’t call Doocy out on it.
For his writeup of the Aug. 14 briefing, Houck did more Fox-fluffing and invoked an old enemy:
The liberal media can spin Wednesday’s inflation report however they want (and they have in some wild cases), but nothing changes the underlining facts how Americans continue to struggle. Even though one AP reporter eagerly wondered if “the inflation problem is solved”, Fox’s duo of Peter Doocy and Edward Lawrence showed up at that day’s White House press briefing to give both Karine Jean-Pierre and Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein hardballs.
And, as we saw with reporters from ABC and NBC, the liberal media can finally speak the truth about Hunter Biden’s life of ruin and the legal peril he faces now that his father Joe Biden is no longer running for reelection.
Later during Bernstein’s Q&A and minutes after a long-winded answer to CBS’s Weijia Jiang arguing President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been hard at work on prices (even though they’ve had almost four years to address it), Lawrence wondered why should anyone trust Biden and Harris to finish that job.
[…]
Doocy spoke to Jean-Pierre about the economy through the lens of Harris’s campaign and Axios reporting she plans to separate herself from the administration bearing her name, specifically on Bidenomics:
Doocy then twice tried to have Jean-Pierre admit that, in his words, “if Bidenomics was more popular, President Biden would still be the candidate.”
Of course, she wouldn’t bite and instead invoked “MAGAnomics” and the false claims about “want[ing]” the country to suffer “supercharged inflation” and have increase “taxes on the middle class” and “cut Social Security”.
Doocy closed with the press access issue to Harris: “The Vice President’s team is not holding any press briefings. You are left to answer everything for her, even though you are not the Vice President’s press secretary. Is that getting old?”
As someone clearly checked out, Jean-Pierre insisted she speaks “for the Biden-Harris administration” and it’s been an “honor and privilege to stand before you to be able to do that job, and I will do it as long as — as long as I can — right — to the end of this term”.
Houck is not going to admit that the MRC has largely ignored Hunter Biden since his father dropped out of the presidential race because his prosecution was always political and Joe Biden’s withdrawal meant the MRC no longer had to feign concern about him — well, that and the lying informant (which resulted in the MRC correcting dozens of NewsBusters posts, something it still hasn’t disclose to its readers).
September
Despite bothering to cover only two of five White House press briefings in August, the Houck wants you to think White House press secretary is the lazy one in his writeup of the Sept. 3 briefing, which carried a gushy headline touting a “DOOZY from DOOCY”:
Tuesday marked the first White House press briefing in 21 days and, along with the fact that Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre still found a way to show up nearly an hour late (by starting a 2:30 p.m. briefing at 3:12 p.m.), Fox’s Peter Doocy returned with a stunning doozy by asking about President Biden attacking Israel and Vice President Kamala Harris code-switching between audiences.
Along with having a crutch in former DNC Chair and ex-Labor Secretary Tom Perez, there was plenty of other points to roll your eyes over softballs and tough questions from other usual suspects.
But it was Doocy Time that drew the eyeballs and looks of disgust from reporters around him. He led off with a simple question: “In the President’s public comments, why is he harder on Benjamin Netanyahu than he is on the terrorist leader of Hamas?”
Jean-Pierre insisted Biden “has been very, very clear about Hamas leaders and what they have done” and done so “multiple times”. Ignoring how Biden blamed Netanyahu for there not being a hostage deal, Jean-Pierre claimed “Hamas is responsible” for what’s happened over the last 10 months and Biden will continue to be “clear about that”.
This went right into Harris changing her dialect depending whom she’s speaking to, as we saw when contrasting her Labor Day speeches in Detroit and Pittsburgh: “Since when does the Vice President have what sounds like a Southern accent?”
Jean-Pierre was not amused, claiming she had “no idea what” he was “talking about”. Based on her tone of disgust, she, in fact, did as she called it “insane”[.] […]
When Doocy asked if this was “how she talks in meetings here”, a flustered Jean-Pierre twice said she was “moving on” and into the restful questions (starting with one about Ukraine) from Voice of America’s Anita Powell.
Houck didn’t mention that Fox News cut away from the briefing right after Doocy’s question, apparently satisfied that its employee had manufactured a soundbite it could replay the rest of the day. It’s almost as if that was planned in advance.
Houck’s writeup of the Sept. 9 briefing started this way:
Monday’s White House press briefing led off with national security spokesman and frequent Karine Jean-Pierre crutch John Kirby defending the Biden-Harris administration’s deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan in light of a House Foreign Affairs Committee report, arguing they’ve done plenty of soul-searching, but feel proud of what happened and want to move on.
Thankfully, a few reporters had some questions about that, including CBS’s Ed O’Keefe. Unfortunately, his bosses didn’t think they were that important as his exchange with Kirby and the wider topic were both ignored from Monday’s CBS Evening News and Tuesday’s CBS Mornings.
No mention of Fox News dumping the previous briefing after getting its Doocy soundbite. Instead, he fluffed Doocy’s colleague Jacqui Heinrich asking why Harris is “spending so much time trying to define Trump and link him to Project 2025 rather than define herself?”
When Jean-Pierre shrugged at these questions since she’s not on the Harris campaign, Heinrich replied she asked since “the campaign is not holding regular briefings” or “a Q&A forum like we have here and you’re the spokeswoman for the Biden-Harris administration.”
Heinrich’s last question was even more simple than the ones on Afghanistan: “Does President Biden define Vice President Harris as a progressive Democrat?”
Behold this world salad from Jean-Pierre as she avoided giving Harris any ideological label[.]
Says the guy who won’t give Doocy and Heinrich accurate ideological labels, even as he regularly labels no-right-wing reporters as “liberal.” He served up more hypocritical labeling (and no-labeling) in his writeup of the Sept. 12 briefing:
On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was lucky to have softballs from liberal journalists discounting the mass, unfettered immigration puts on small towns, schools, and social services like in Springfield, Ohio as, leaving those aside, she was hit with searing questions on the economy and government spending by Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich and Edward Lawrence.
Heinrich cited “a new analysis by the Republicans who are on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee” that found, in “seven battleground states….the average household is paying, for the same basket of goods and services on average, about $1,000 more per month compared to January 2021.”
She cited “pretty stark” examples in places like Arizona and Nevada skyrocketing to $1,200 a month to $1,075 in Georgia and then $1,017 in North Carolina before asking: “Has President Biden’s policies positioned the Vice President poorly in these states to win this election?”
Jean-Pierre insisted that’s not the case because “core inflation has come down…because of the work that [we’ve] been able to do” and “wages are rising faster than prices are, nearly 16 million jobs created” but “we do understand that there is more work to be done.”
She also tried to throw in the tiresome lines claiming the 2024 GOP wants cut entitlements, but Heinrich hit back by noting “no one is running on” that and “we went through all of that” before.
Houck refused to explain why he called out “liberal journalists” but wouldn’t label Heinrich and Lawrence as right-wing, even though they indisputably are.
Houck couldn’t be bothered to write about the briefing the next day — possibly so he didn’t have to write about another right-wing reporter, Newsmax’s James Rosen, rudely interrupting another reporter’s question and prompting Jean-PIerre to repsond, “Not everybody wants to hear the sound of your voice, sir.”
Houck wants you to think that Donald Trump has no responsibility to curb his hateful rhetoric, and he’s mad that White House press secretary Karine Jean-PIerre called out his mancrush during the Sept. 17 briefing:
Tuesday’s White House press briefing provided the clearest indications yet the liberal media and their allies won’t tone down their rhetoric and continue to refer to Donald Trump and his supporters as dangerous and a “threat to democracy” despite the second assassination attempt on Trump in as many months.
Thanks to a slew of softballs from liberal media outlets such as ABC and CBS, they teamed with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to make the case that it’s Trump, running mate JD Vance, and Republicans who must turn down the temperature. And, when challenged on this by Fox’s Peter Doocy, Jean-Pierre told him it’s who he’s being “dangerous”.
Doocy listened until he was the second to last reporter called on and made it count by standing up for sanity:
It’s been only two days since somebody allegedly tried to kill Donald Trump again and you’re here at the podium in the White House Briefing Room calling him a threat. How many more assassination attempts on Donald Trump until the President and the Vice President and you pick a different word to describe Trump other than threat?
This led to a sigh from Jean-Pierre before arguing not only did she “completely disagree with the premise of your question,” but argued he was being “incredibly dangerous” for wondering whether the Biden-Harris regime should choose its words more careful.
By doing so, she insinuated, Doocy would inspire a disturbed person to put Biden or Harris’s life in danger seeing as how “American people are watching” him.
She also retreated to talking points about January 6 and Paul Pelosi as reasons “the temperature” (by Republicans) must be “lower[ed]”, adding it’s only factual to call attention to the danger the MAGA movement poses[.] […]
Jean-Pierre grossly stuck to her talking points by screaming about January 6 four times in less than 30 seconds as proof of violence on the right and further demanded Doocy “be careful on how you’re asking me these questions” and “people” could react violently to the White House, who are only here to “fight for our democracy” and “freedom”.
Houck curiously failed to highlight clips of Jean-Pierre’s purported “screaming” — which tells us she wasn’t actually doing that, and that he knows she wasn’t actually screaming. He also didn’t explain why he’s so offended by Jean-Pierre bringing up the Trump-incited Capitol riot.
Houck began his writeup of the Sept. 19 briefing this way:
Thursday’s White House press briefing lacked some quality Doocy Time for the second day in a row, but there was still plenty of tense back-and-forths featuring Newsmax’s James Rosen, CBS’s Ed O’Keefe, and surprisingly the AP’s Zeke Miller over the Biden-Harris administration’s decision to hold this week’s Quad Summit — featuring leaders from Australia, India, and Japan — in Wilmington, Delaware and thus severely curtail press access.
But Houck curiously (and lazily) failed to offer a writeup of the Sept. 18 briefing — which tells us that he only cares about these briefing when his favorite biased right-wing reporters get to grandstand and display their bias. Apparently, if there is isn’t any “quality Doocy Time,” it’s not worth his time. And we don’t recall Houck complaining about press access being curtailed when Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham went nearly an entire year without holding a briefing.
Houck had more Doocy Time mancrushing to gush over in the Sept. 30 briefing:
Monday’s White House press briefing was otherwise uneventful with plenty of process questions about the fallout from Hurricane Helene and concerns about Middle East tensions (which would grow Tuesday with Iran’s missile attacks), but Doocy Time brought the heat with challenging questions on dangerous illegal immigrants and how President Biden and Vice President Harris spent their weekend as untold numbers perished in North Carolina and the surroundings areas.
“13,000 people who have been convicted of murder crossed the border illegally and are living among us. So how much danger are you U.S. communities in right now because of this,” Doocy began, citing data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Jean-Pierre went down the route she did in June following a number of videos showing President Biden in states of confusion over in Europe, insisting they were all lies.
[…]
Doocy had a simple follow-up to explain “what the misrepresentation is”, but Jean-Pierre refused to do so because the 13,000 number “is been falsely represented here” and “[i]f you look at the total returns and removal of the past year, that has been higher than every year under the previous administration since — since — uh — 2010[.]”
Houck made a sneering comment about “whatever that meant,” but he’s being deliberately obtuse. He knows exactly what Jean-PIerre is talking about — Doocy falsely portrayed the 13,000 number as taking place solely under the Biden administration when it actually spans decades. How do we know he knows? Because he linked to a post by his fellow MRC writer Geoffrey Dickens conceding that fact. But Houck won’t let inconvenient facts get in the way of his mancrushing:
Doocy moved on, but not before a final topic on the dock workers strike: “[H]ow worried your folks at the White House that a port strike that could make things like fruits and vegetables more expensive, could make it a lot harder for Vice President Harris to win the election?”
Of course, Jean-Pierre punted by citing the election and stating in part what the administration does believe is ensuring “workers are — are paid and wages and the economy is working — uh — and that we’re lowering costs for the American people[.]”
Houck didn’t explain why he thought it was OK for Doocy to ask such an obviously biased question.
October
Houck spent his writeup of the Oct. 4 White House press briefing complaining that 1) President Biden purportedly took too long to pay a visit to the briefing room, and 2) non-right-wing reporters didn’t go all Peter Doocy on him:
On Friday, President Biden made his first appearance in the White House Briefing Room with only three and a half months left in office after years of calls from reporters across the political spectrum.
Sure, he only took questions for just over eight minutes, but the press corps made sure to throw this unique opportunity away with a combination of open-ended foreign policy queries and softballs, including one from taxpayer-funded NPR dialing up the fear porn about post-election violence.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre picked the reporters herself, so that was the first indication this would be a joke.
The Associated Press’s Josh Boak went first because that’s how these things go (or risk serious hissy fits, like Sean Spicer learned) and put this pathetic question on the tee for Ol’ Joe: “Florida Senator Marco Rubio described today’s jobs report as having fake numbers. What do you make of that and how worried are you that many Americans are hearing that the jobs numbers aren’t real?”
Biden repeatedly quipped about how he had to choose words carefully (or he’d presumably get in trouble), but said the jobs numbers are “real” and “sincere” and also par for the course for “MAGA Republicans” calling “anything…they don’t like…fake.”
Why is it “pathetic” for Boak to point out that Rubio is falsely accusing Biden of manufacturing fake employment numbers? Houck doesn’t explain — he’s apparently just mad that Rubio’s lie was called out.
NPR’s Tamara Keith stepped up to the plate and, instead of asking about those affected by Hurricane Helene, the hundreds dead, and the growing uproar surrounding the federal response, she wondered about election legitimacy and post-election violence:
[…]
Keith doubled down on the MSNBC-speak: “Are you making any preparations, getting security briefings related to domestic security?”
Biden shot back that he “always[s] gets those briefings.”
Houck closed by sneering, “How incestuous” — as if his employer doesn’t have incestuous relationships with right-wing media to make sure it never faces any remotely challenging questions.
In his writeup of the Oct. 7 briefing, Houck did some serious mancrushing on his favorite biased Fox News reporter after his misinformation was called out, with an added reappearance of the DeSantis Defense League:
On Monday with millions of Americans still recovering from catastrophic devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and more preparing this week for Hurricane Milton, numerous White House correspondents chose to engage in childish and maniacal bashing with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) with false claims about him ignoring calls from Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
In contrast, Fox’s Peter Doocy went to bat for Americans who don’t have time for the petty pontificating and bellyaching from Washington D.C. and wondered why the Biden administration triumphantly announced $157 million in foreign aid for Lebanon as the terror group that runs the country — Hezbollah — wars with Israel.
“[O]n this issue of funding, the administration has money to send to Lebanon without Congress coming back, but Congress does have to come back to approve money to send to people in North Carolina. Do I have that right,” Doocy asked.
Jean-Pierre insisted Harris and President Biden have “had a — a robust, whole-of-government response to [Helene] with “more than $200 million — that we have directly put towards survivors here for the di- — for disaster help, and that’s because of this President’s commitment to make sure that we are there for communities that are impacted” plus “more than 1,500 federal — federal folks on the ground to help.”
She added such invocations of Lebanese aid is “disinformation, misinformation,” and “dangerous.”
Doocy didn’t take too kindly to this nonsense:
[…]
But President Biden is fond of saying, “Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value.” If he has got money for people in Lebanon right now, without Congress having to come back, what does it say about his values that there is not enough money right now for people in North Carolina who need it? That’s not misinformation.
Jean-Pierre drew a look of utter bafflement and an “excuse me” from Doocy when she replied everything he said was “misinformation: “Wait. No, that is. Wait, your whole — your whole premise of the question is misinformation, sir.”
[…]
Jean-Pierre put the onus on Congress for more money being needed to care for American citizens: “Peter, this is nothing new. Congress comes together. They provide money — millions of dollars for disaster relief. We’re asking them to do the job that they have been doing for some time.”
Doocy countered he was “reading from a letter that President Biden sent to” the leaders of each parties in Congress saying FEMA needed more funding.
“The President’s letter is not misinformation. Would you agree,” he asked.
Jean-Pierre wasn’t stuck to her script, saying “the way you’re asking me the question is misinformation” before going on with Doocy torching her for choosing to merely “call a question that you don’t like ‘misinformation’” as “[t]hat’s very unfair”[.]
Houck then returned to DeSantis blowing off Harris:
Going back to the DeSantis bashing, the Vice President doesn’t sign off on disaster declarations or be the person to give FEMA permission to release aid and surge assistance to the region. Rather, the President does, but the liberal media have a candidate (Harris) whom they’re working to elect and paint as a Boss Lady.
Houck found another right-wing reporter to fluff in his writeup of the Oct. 9 briefing:
With much of the national media ghoulishly obsessing over fringe conspiracy theories about Hurricane Milton and Russia-related claims from Bob Woodward’s new book, Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann actually did his job Wednesday in pressing White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on claims in the Woodward book about Ukraine and President Biden reportedly regretful he made Merrick Garland Attorney General.
A few hours later, Wegmann asked President Biden about the wholly manufactured news cycle claiming Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is ignoring Vice President Kamala Harris (who has no power over any aspect of the federal response).
That question came after Biden spent much of his time blaming Trump for alleged misinformation and Harris’s Fatal Attraction-like obsession with bashing DeSantis:
[…]
Rewinding to mid-afternoon’s White House briefing, AP’s Aamer Madhani, The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg used part of their question time to invoke claims from Woodward’s book that then-President Trump sent then-scarce COVID-19 tests to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and has spoken with him numerous times since leaving the White House.
While he also went down this rabbit hole, NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez also asked about Biden allegedly having used expletives to describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Wegmann wasn’t having any of this.
In contrast, he wanted to know why Jean-Pierre engaged with the unsubstantiated claims about Trump and Putin when she usually doesn’t “often speculate about hypotheticals.”
A claim and vetted by a respected reporter with a track record of accuracy is not a “hypothetical,” and neither Wegmann nor Houck offered any reason to distrust the claim since it’s well within what we know Trump is capable of doing. Houck also didn’t explain why it’s “ghoulish” to point out that Donald Trump and other right-wingers are deliberately spreading misinformation about FEMA hurricane relief.
Houck spent his writeup of the Oct. 10 White House press briefing spewing hate and insults at anyone who failed to be a servile Trump-fluffer like him:
Thursday’s White House press briefing appropriately had a central focus of late Wednesday’s landfall of Hurricane Milton on Florida’s Gulf Coast and tornadoes across the state, but the partisan shills chose to ask a slew of questions emphasizing about this vague “misinformation” campaign they claim has had catastrophic consequences in the south as somehow on part with apocalyptic physical devastation and incalculable loss of life and fortune.
CNN’s Kayla Tausche first went there with this question to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who obviously went along with angry but also vague claims:
There was nothing “vague” about that hurricane misinformation — it was all too clear, and Houck’s MRC colleagues helped Donald Trump and others spread those lies. Houck then lashed out at ABC’s Mary Bruce for pointing out that FEMA personnel have faced threats of violence over the misinformation, bizarrely attacking her as “Disney’s resident North Korean news lady for the Biden-Harris regime”:
Ah, yes, Mary. Definitely put FEMA workers at the center of one’s pity, not those who lost everything in Helene and/or Milton.
She dug deeper her pit of selfishness, clearly alluding to Russia: “Do you have any information to suggest that any foreign governments have tried to take advantage and amplify this misinformation about the response and recovery effort?”
Is Houck claiming that FEMA workers deserved to be bullied and intimidated for trying to do their job based on right-wing misinformation? Seems so — which makes us wonder what psychological issues he’s having these days.
Houck’s focus of ire turned to Mayorkas, whom he deemed “evasive, prickly, and seemingly unpleasant,” going on to praise one of his biased Fox News coterie, Jacqui Heinrich, for asking a loaded question about a different subject even though Mayorkas was there to talk specifically about hurricane relief efforts, prompting Houck to screech:
Mayorkas unsurprisingly declared he was “here in North Carolina” talking to those who’ve lost family members and their homes, so he would only address it “in a different setting.”
He was such a miffed prick he threw in a condescending, “thank you.”
To Heinrich’s credit, she wasn’t having it and not intimidated by Mayorkas’s rudeness[.]
Houck’s headline stated “Despicable Tools,” but he may as well been talking about himself and Heinrich.
From there, Houck moved to spreading gossip about press secretary Karine Jean-PIerre in an Oct. 15 post:
Axios’s Alex Thompson – one of the few establishment media journalists who’s been doing real journalism on the Biden-Harris administration – uncorked a doozy late Monday revealing further tension in the regime’s ranks as sources told him “Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been blocking national security spokesperson John Kirby from joining her at the podium at White House press briefings.”
Noting the two have long feuded (which he’s covered before), Thompson noted “Kirby has been mostly absent” from briefings even as Middle East tensions have continued to rachet up and his entire job is, in essence, to serve as the regime spokesman on foreign policy matters.
Thompson even brought the statistics to back this up and cited “the departure this summer of Anita Dunn, the White House’s top communications aide” as the point of divergence. Of the briefings since she left July 30, Kirby has only been there 15 percent of the time versus 55 percent in the 2024 briefings prior.
The White House unsurprisingly trotted out regime keyboard warrior Andrew Bates to claim there’s no there and had another source (perhaps Bates too, but again…anonymous!) that Kirby fading from view was planned “closer to the election,” but Thompson’s case was damning.
Again, Houck is projecting here — it’s clear he’s the real keyboard warrior who doesn’t have the guts to confront Jean-Pierre in person.
For the Oct. 21 briefing, Houck complained that legitimate questions were raised about Elon Musk’s shady cash giveaway to voters:
Monday’s White House press briefing was a light affair given the world’s focus on the upcoming election, but there were still some notable exchanges, led by ABC senior White House correspondent Selina Wang beating the liberal media’s drum that Telsa founder and X owner Elon Musk should face the wrath of the Biden-Harris Justice Department for his $1 million giveaways to registered voters in swing states who sign a petition with his group America PAC.
“Elon Musk is pledging to give away $1 million every day up until the election to voters in battleground states. Some experts are saying this is clearly illegal vote buying. Does the White House believe what he’s doing is illegal,” Wang huffed, to which Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment.
Wang really, really wanted Musk to pay for his political activity, though: “Can you talk about how the President’s reacting to this in terms of does he believe it’s appropriate? Does he agree with what Governor Shapiro is saying about how this needs to be investigated?”
To her credit, Jean-Pierre didn’t change her answer, saying that’s not something for her “to speak to” and she “would have to leave to” the Federal Elections Commission.
Wang tried not once but twice more, implying something should happen to Musk’s company SpaceX given its government contracts[.]
Houck didn’t explain why Musk’s actions should not be held to scrutiny. Then again, all Trump supporters are expected to excuse any crime committed by Trump and his allies.
Jean-Pierre held one more press briefing for the month, on Oct. 30, but Houck couldn’t be bothered to write about it. Couldn’t think of enough insults to lob, apparently.