New Press Secretary, Same MRC Hate: July 2024
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck just can't stop whining that reporters in White House press briefings aren't all bad-faith right-wing partisans like his beloved Peter Doocy.
After taking off most of June, Curtis Houck returned in July to his usual, tired partisan attacks on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in the wake of President Biden’s shaky debate performance. In his writeup of the July 2 briefing, he was giddy that non-right-wing media was sounding like Fox News in raising questions about Biden:
In the first White House press briefing since June 18, the press corps on Tuesday showed in nearly an hour-long marathon of questioning that not only do they smell blood in the water regarding the Joe Biden presidency, but also (at least some) showed cowardice in suddenly pivoting from years of what could be the largest cover-up in U.S. history in Biden’s mental impairment.
Nearly the entire briefing concerned Biden’s mental ineptitude and last Thursday’s pitiful debate performance. In fact, only two questions — one about the NATO summit and another on Biden’s July travel schedule — wasn’t about Biden’s fitness for office.
The Associated Press’s Colleen Long kicked off with a fairly pedestrian request for a “response to” “growing calls from Democrats…for the President to step aside”.
This gave the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre room to run with a lengthy response doubling down on the narrative about Biden having “a cold” and “hoarse voice” and that the White House “understand[s] the concerns”, but won’t quit because “he knows hot to come back” [sic] […]
Perhaps the question of the briefing that could be one for the history books came from NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, one of the regime’s more reliable hacks: “Is anyone in the White House hiding information about the President’s health or his ability to do the job day to day?”:
When Jean-Pierre said they’re not hiding anything, O’Donnell correctly followed up about having Biden’s doctor give a press conference and noted Biden’s subsequent appearances have been largely scripted:
[…]
Following a final question from the NPR seat about Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) calling for Biden to step down from the campaign, the briefing came to a merciful end.
Houck was back to touting right-wing reporters (whom, of course, he failed to identify as such) in his writeup of the July 3 briefing:
In case you didn’t see the litany of embarrassing clips on X earlier this week, Wednesday’s White House press briefing revealed more surprising message discipline from the beat reporters as they continued to rhetorically bludgeon the Biden administration and the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre with questions about the obvious mental decline of President Biden (which, for many, have only decided to acknowledge after Thursday’s debate).
Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann and Daily Mail’s Emily Goodin were two of the last three reporters called on, but were perhaps the most biting. Wegmann called out Biden’s lies about servicemembers dying on his watch when 13 were lost in Afghanistan and three in Jordan:
[…]
Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich grilled Jean-Pierre on the months-old story from Axios that Biden only truly functions in a work setting for six hours a day as well as the notion he takes daily naps. She also hammered home the idea that why was Biden going to a Waffle House and staging a fiery rally if he had such a horrendous cold. Needless to say, Jean-Pierre didn’t appreciate it:
[…]
Another notable moment of the briefing came when Newsmax’s James Rosen interjected to wonder if Biden’s currently “awake”.
This triggered a scolding from NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell:
[…]
Perhaps the biggest tool in the press corps except for Bruce, The Washington Post’s Matt Viser wanted to know if “you guys usually have accommodations for him after he does a trip that he’s gonna have jet lag for that long a period of time” and if they’re honestly going with the (preposterous) idea of jet lag taking a two-week toll on Biden as for why he did so poorly in the debate.
Of course, Jean-Pierre, in so many words, said yes in addition to “the cold”.
“But if this truly is an emergency situation. It’s taking almost a week for him to address it when there’s natural disasters, when there’s other things happening. He wants to get in front of the cameras and speak to it. In this case, there seems to be multiple days before that happens,” Viser said in a fruitless follow-up.
Fox Business’s Edward Lawrence brought the heat on policy with questions about NATO and Biden’s delegitimizing of the Supreme Court[.]
There wasn’t a Doocy to praise this time around, but Houck earned his paycheck by gushing over all those Fox News correspondents.
Houck’s partisan anger continued in his writeup of the July 8 briefing, which also included shots at national security spokesman John Kirby:
Monday’s White House press briefing descended into chaos amid the third briefing where the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre refused to even acknowledge President Biden’s obvious cognitive decline and declined to answer why a neurologist had visited the White House nearly a dozen times, including once to the residence. Hours later, a letter was released from Biden’s stooge doctor insisting there was nothing to worry about.
Jean-Pierre never called on Fox’s Peter Doocy, so it was left to CBS’s Ed O’Keefe to grill the press secretary and, before her Q&A, national security spokesman John Kirby. In the latter case, Kirby insisted he’s never seen Biden like he was on debate night and said the National Security Council has never kept important information from Biden that arose past his bedtime.
O’Keefe uncorked his righteous outburst after Jean-Pierre dodged repeated questions from the AP’s Zeke Miller about how she wasn’t straight with reporters and the American people last week when asked whether Biden had been checked by doctors:
Weird, we don’t recall Houck ever describing Ronny Jackson as Donald Trump’s “stooge doctor,” though he very clearly was. Instead, he cheered on O’Keefe’s struggle with Jean-Pierre before moving on:
Eventually, O’Keefe ceded space to NPR’s Asma Khalid asking more gently to no avail and also whether Biden has been treated for “fluid buildup in the brain”.
ABC’s Mary Bruce, as the chief Biden apple polisher, was more gingerly in her questions by merely wanting to know “what…was that meeting” between Cannard and O’Connor about and if “can…tell us.”
Jean-Pierre couldn’t let O’Keefe going full Peter Doocy on her, so she used time during a back-and-forth with Reuters’s Andrea Shalal to slam his behavior as “not okay” to the point that, by the end, she sounded like she was about to cry[.] […]
Unfortunately, not one reporter asked about another media scandal from over the weekend as a black radio host in Philadelphia was fired from WURD for agreeing to interview Biden using pre-written questions sent by his handlers.
For the July 9 briefing, Houck cheered his mancrush for asking the biased right-wing questions he’s all too known for:
While not the barnburner for the ages that we saw on Monday, Tuesday’s White House press briefing was more staid as if someone (or some people) had a chat or talkin’ to, but they weren’t without hardballs for the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre on the Biden regime’s ever-shifting excuses and narratives on the President’s cognitive impairment.
Fox’s Peter Doocy most notably was called on as Jean-Pierre was so tense with other reporters on Monday she avoided her chief sparring partner. Doocy started off with his trademark opening baseline that one might think is an easier question: “Does President Biden commit to serving a full second term if reelected?”
After Jean-Pierre said “yes”, Doocy wanted to know what was up with Biden telling Democratic governors last week that while his health is fine, “it’s just his brain” that’s not working as well anymore and it best functions before 8:00 p.m.
Jean-Pierre tried to pass it off as a joke and no big deal, but Doocy used this to wonder who at the White House would decide to react if “the Pentagon at some point picked up an incoming nuke” at 11 p.m.
Doocy also tried to drill down on the curious journey of Hunter Biden into White House meetings as well as whether the White House isn’t testing Biden for dementia or Parkinson’s Disease because they’d recognize any diagnosis as an immediate death knell to the presidency:
Houck also claimed that “CBS’s Ed O’Keefe was back at it following his explosive throwdown with Jean-Pierre a day earlier and, after someone clearly got to him, toned it down.” Houck offered no evidence to support his claimed that “someone clearly got to” O’Keefe, which makes Houck look a lot like a right-wing conspiracy theorist.
Houck also reviewed Biden’s July 11 press conference by complaining that reporters didn’t sound like Sean Hannity clones in questioning him:
After repeated pushbacks, President Biden’s much-anticipated press conference did little Thursday night to change that his presidency and reelection chances remain in crisis, thanks to a pre-selected list of reporters who gingerly went about his cognitive impairment and, in some cases, strayed completely from the story that’s come to dominate the global body politic.
Biden gave roughly seven-and-a-half minutes of opening remarks and then admitted this would be a farce by revealing he had “been given a list of people to call on here.”
Reuters’s Jeff Mason led off with a tractor-trailer sized question listing off concerns about his presidency from supporters, but no more than that.
[…]
A softball press conference wasn’t complete without taxpayer-funded NPR, but it didn’t start off all that well as Biden referred to Asma Khalid as “Hassam”.
Once she corrected him, she brought up the Israel-Hamas war and invited him to state whether “there’s anything you feel personally you wish you would have done differently over the course of the war.”
Her other question came from the hard left: “I remember covering your campaign in 2020, and there was a moment where you referred to yourself as a ‘bridge candidacy’, a transition to a generation of younger leaders. I want to understand what changed?”
Houck’s biased reviews of White House briefings and such these days are laced with edited clips that he had earlier posted on his Twitter/X account that are then embedded into his posts — all the better to keep everything inside the MRC’s right-wing bubble.
Houck’s writeup of the July 24 White House press briefing featured his usual ritual bashing of press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and ritual mancrushing over biased Fox News reporter Peter Doocy. Here’s how he started it:
With President Biden’s mysterious, sudden departure from Las Vegas last week after what his doctor insisted was just a positive Covid test and a week of isolation that culminated in dropping out of the 2024 campaign, Wednesday marked the first White House press briefing since July 15, so there were bound to be tense moments like Fox’s Peter Doocy alleging a “cover up” of Biden’s physical decline.
In fact, there was nothing “mysterious” or sudden about it: He’s invoking a right-wing conspiracy theory. Then the mancrushing over Doocy seriously commenced with loving — but selective — detail of his biased questioning:
Things started innocently with Doocy asking Jean-Pierre how she was “doing with all of this”, to which Jean-Pierre jokingly huffed, “you care about how I feel?”
Doocy then asked if she’d “stick around for a potential President Harris administration”, but Jean-Pierre quipped she’s just trying to “get through the day”. She then remarked she hadn’t seem him “in awhile”, leaving Doocy to clap back “Well, uh, you guys haven’t had a press briefing since President Biden dropped out of the race, so —.”
Things immediately grew tense when Doocy cut to the chase: “It — it would seem that people in this White House knew that President Biden was slipping and it was hidden from the American people, so who ordered White House officials to cover up a declining President?”
Jean-Pierre claimed this was “a narrative that you love” and, from there, the cross-talk began with Jean-Pierre trying to shut Doocy down so she could filibuster. On the other side, Doocy pointed out “he did a press conference at NATO”, insisted he was “in it” to win, and had “all these things…to finish and then, 10 years later” he quits.
[…]
Doocy pivoted to Vice President Kamala Harris’s record on the border: “Does she still want to get rid of [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]?”
Jean-Pierre refused to say and instead blamed Republicans for the border crisis because not enough of them supported a deal negotiated between the White House and a select few senators.
Houck is dishonestly framing this exchange. As Mediaite reported, Jean-Pierre pointed out that Republicans tanked the bipartisan bill under orders from Donald Trump — something that even Fox News agreed happened: “You guys reported that. That’s not coming from me.” Tellingly, Houck refused to provide video or a transcript of that exchange.
Doocy asked a slightly different question: “As a partner, though, she’s been in charge of root causes of migration for years, she has never spoken to the Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens or the Border Patrol Chief before him, Raoul Ortiz. What should that tell us about her leadership style?” But Houck didn’t want to talk about that, so it was back to the Doocy mancrushing:
Doocy asked a slightly different question: “As a partner, though, she’s been in charge of root causes of migration for years, she has never spoken to the Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens or the Border Patrol Chief before him, Raoul Ortiz. What should that tell us about her leadership style?”
Jean-Pierre scoffed at this question with the insistence she was tasked with addressing “root causes”, so she didn’t need to meet with them so much as engage in “diplomacy” with other countries.
Houck also failed to mention that another right-wing reporter, James Rosen of Newsmax, apparently got jealous over the attention Jean-Pierre was giving to Doocy, interjecting at one point, “You control the briefing room, not Peter. Come on.”
Interesting that Houck censors factual information that’s unflattering to his mancrushing targets. That makes a biased, unreliable writer — the kind that his employer regularly attacks.
Houck began his malicious writeup of the July 30 White House press briefing by noting how many there have been under President Biden — though he didn’t mention that this number is more than twice the number held throughout the entirety of Donald Trump’s presidency:
Depending on one’s outlook, it was either amusing, annoying, or frustrating to see Tuesday marked the 500th White House press briefing of the Biden regime and, true to form, Karine Jean-Pierre ducked hardballs about the left’s court-packing charade, the national debt, and even how often President Biden and Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris actually talk.
First, Jean-Pierre began by acknowledging this being the 500th time someone had taken to the podium that spawned so many “moments together and important exchanges” and thus they’re “proud of” and recognize “the importance of the role you all play” as “a pillar of our democracy”:
[…]
Skipping ahead to Heinrich’s turn and she came out with a short, to-the-point question on the so-called Supreme Court “reform” package like you’d see from her colleague, Peter Doocy:
Heinrich had a natural follow-up: “But why would he not then read in top Democrats, including the Senate Judiciary chair, about this effort?”
Thanks to liberal narratives browbeating half the country into delegitimizing the court, Jean-Pierre claimed “the majority of Americans want to see this” and Biden’s claim to impose term limits and new picks every two years came thanks to “range of conservative legal experts and Republican elected officials”.
Heinrich wasn’t having it and fact-checked both this alleged support from a judicial commission and Biden’s own past comments:
Houck didn’t disclose that Heinrich is a right-wing reporter advancing Republican talking points against Supreme Court reform.
Houck spent much of his writeup of the July 31 briefing complaining about non-right-wing reporters:
Wednesday’s White House press briefing not only featured two special guests to help prop up the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre (Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and national security flack John Kirby), but there were a number of silly questions about climate change, Islamophobia, fawning over Kamala Harris, and live reaction to former President being ambushed at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference.
Reuters’s Andrea Shalal got in a question to Vilsack and questioned whether he’d be able to ensure the Biden administration’s far-left climate change policies would be cemented and irreversible if Trump wins in November:
[…]
Meanwhile, USA Today’s Joey Garrison had this insanely loaded softball inviting Jean-Pierre to share what Biden thinks of Harris’s “strong initial enthusiasm the Democratic voters are showing” with improved polling, large crowds, and oodles of money:
[…]
Showing coordination in the liberal media’s world, NBC’s Peter Alexander chose to not follow-up on a question from a reporter on the CBS seat about why Biden and Harris have ducked the NABJ Conference, but instead read Trump’s comments on Harris’s racial identity as a softball to hit out of the park.
Houck has never accused right-wing reporters of engaging in “coordination” with their hostile questions to Jean-Pierre. Surprisingly, he referred to only one right-wing reporters in his writeup:
Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich was also there and wondered where in the world is Joe Biden and, given his lack of public appearances, “[i]t lends itself to the appearance that he’s done governing.”
Jean-Pierre scoffed:
[…]
Heinrich then brought up what’s happened in the Middle East and why has Harris and Biden’s Secretaries of Defense and State weighed in publicly, but not him.
Maybe Heinrich and her fellow ideologues didn’t coordinate enough for Houck’s satisfaction, and he decided to punish them by not promoting their attacks.