You’d think every Biden White House press conference would be a home run because, despite the president being largely incoherent, the press corps is exceedingly friendly to Democrats. Nonetheless, there are no home runs for President Joe Biden’s new press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. It seems everything she says is a swing and a miss.
That’s been the case since Jean-Pierre inherited her post from her predecessor Jen Psaki, who left the White House spin team for the one over at MSNBC. But Monday was particularly bad for Jean-Pierre, who stuttered, lied, and fumbled her way through her massive binder to avoid saying what anyone with eyes knows: Everything is a disaster.
Perhaps most disastrous is the state of the American economy, and when Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked about it, a flustered Jean-Pierre parroted the tired “Putin price hike” defense.
She took the lie one step further and even said we’re seeing a “historic economic boom” thanks to the so-called American Rescue Plan.
“Didn’t it also lead to historic inflation?” Doocy asked, to which Jean-Pierre unconvincingly insisted, “No.”
Inflation has gotten so bad, even CNN has been forced to acknowledge it, however amicably. On Monday, Don Lemon asked Jean-Pierre whether “the Biden administration bear[s] some responsibility” for inflation, saying economists conclude that the American Rescue Plan did contribute to the spike.
“It has put us in a place where we can actually put us in a place where the American people feel can actually, we can take on inflation,” babbled Jean-Pierre in response. “In order to take this on, we’ve got to have, to be in a good historic economic place, which is where we are right now.”
Jean-Pierre also snapped at Lemon for asking about Biden’s “stamina, physically and mentally” to run again in 2024, just taken aback that Don would ask such a thing: “Don, you’re asking me this question! Oh my gosh! He’s the president of the United States!”
It’s not just the economic crisis and the president’s fitness tripping up the press secretary, either. On Monday, Jean-Pierre flipped through her mega-binder for more than 20 seconds before saying “I don’t have anything new” on the dire baby formula shortage that’s left infants across the country hospitalized.
The same day, in a large word salad about how the “Department of DOJ” prevented the murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the press secretary lied that “the president has [condemned]” the assassination attempt. Fact-check: As the Dobbs v. Jackson decision that would put pro-lifers on the starting line of the abortion fight by overturning Roe v. Wade looms, Biden hasn’t said a single word about the attempt to intimidate the court by taking a sitting justice’s life.
One could maybe empathize with a press secretary tasked with taking on a hostile and lying press — such as, say, I don’t know, anyone speaking for the Trump administration — but that’s not what’s happening here. The corporate media lapdogs love Democrats.
That’s why they ask questions like whether migrants are flooding the border because Biden is just too “moral” and “decent.” It’s why they frame Biden’s economic performance as “unmatched … if it weren’t for inflation.” It’s why they say Biden’s banal, left-wing talking points are “soothing” and praise him for restoring the “unique pastoral role of the presidency.”
Especially in front of this fawning media backdrop, there’s really no other way to say it: Jean-Pierre is really bad at her job.