It was an exchange that rivaled some of most theater-of-the-absurd moments of Karine Jean-Pierre’s career.
The Baghdad Bob of the Biden administration on Tuesday tried to turn a question about the carjacking of Rep. Henry Cuellar on Monday into an attack on Republicans in Congress.
But Fox News’ Peter Doocy didn’t let it go by.
The moment came during the daily White House news briefing, when a press secretary already known for flaming partisanship decided that when a Democratic congressman is carjacked in a Democratic city, where Democrats control all levers of government and all public services, that the group that’s really to blame is … Republicans.
And they’re to blame for failing to support a bill that the Democratic president signed into law more than two years ago, after it was passed by a Democratic Congress.
Check it out here.
DOOCY TIME: “How are you going to blame Republicans for [Cuellar being carjacked]? Isn’t D.C. run by a bunch of Democrats?”
KJP: “I’m going to speak to what [Biden] has done…American Rescue Plan, not Republican…voted for it. Not one…Billions of dollars…to make sure… pic.twitter.com/XlgKQ5Urr9
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 3, 2023
According to the White House transcript of the briefing, Doocy was following up on another reporter’s question that asked whether President Joe Biden had a comment about the carjacking, and what the crime might say “more broadly” about “safety and crime in the District.”
Does Jean-Pierre get kid-glove treatment from the White House press corps?
Yes: 98% (48 Votes)
No: 2% (1 Votes)
Jean-Pierre answered that Biden had spoken to Cuellar (presumably wishing him well, as do all decent Americans), but then pivoted to an utter non sequitur, claiming that Biden “through the American Rescue Plan,” had made “billions of dollars” available at the local level “so that they can make sure that their communities were safe.”
Apparently, it never occurred to the press secretary that the argument failed by its own logic, since the topic of conversation proved at least one community is decidedly unsafe — the very Democratic Washington, D.C., where Biden received a Soviet-like 93 percent of the vote.
Doocy had the logical follow-up: “How are you going to blame Republicans for this?” he asked. “Isn’t D.C. run by a bunch of Democrats?”
Jean-Pierre didn’t back down:
“I’m going to speak to what the President has done, right?” she said. “The President has been very, very straightforward about what he has done to make sure that communities are safe.
“The American Rescue Plan — not one Republican in Congress voted for it. Not one. There were billions of dollars in that plan, in that — in that act to make sure communities across the country got funding so that they can indeed hire more police officers so that they can keep their community safe.
“Republicans had nothing to do with that. They were not involved in that. They decided not to vote on the American Rescue Plan. That’s just a fact.”
Jean-Pierre’s answer had a surreal, Kamala Harris-esque quality to it: Apparently spoken in English, it was made up of subject and verbs, articles and objects, in grammatical order. But there was no there there.
Yes, it is a fact that no Republican voted for the American Rescue Plan — a monstrosity of legislation supposedly aimed at battling the COVID-19 pandemic. But that’s a credit to the GOP, since, as Cuellar’s experience might show, it’s been about as effective at rescuing Americans as the Inflation Reduction Act has been at reducing inflation.
But that has about as much to do with the matter at hand as the fact that the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl in February.
The bill was passed. It was signed into law. American communities supposedly got safer. And Rep. Henry Cuellar got carjacked in D.C. on Monday, in an upscale neighborhood a mile from the Capitol.
Thanks to her Democratic Party affiliation, and no doubt the fact that she’s black, a woman and a lesbian, KJP tends to get a free pass from the White House media (the very group of Americans that should not be going easy on her).
But in the social media world, the audience is a lot tougher. And KJP was savaged.
So republicans voted against something that ultimately passed that was supposed to help communities fight crime. How is it their fault? Clearly the rescue plan didn’t do anything
— zaxman_georgia (@Diversified_Gam) October 4, 2023
She a profesional gaslighter..
— T.Hang (@tiffhang) October 3, 2023
This people are the biggest hypocrites in the history of the world. What a bunch of liars.
— James-Richard Dixon (@JRD387Dixon) October 4, 2023
And this one asked the money question:
if it was passed into law, why are the communities not more safe?
— Useful Idiot (@HarryManback74) October 3, 2023
No one got a chance to ask Jean-Pierre that. The press secretary wrapped up before many more questions could be asked — probably on purpose.
But the fact is, she was nailed. Doocy knew it as well as every honest man or woman in that briefing room knew it. The reckless Democratic spending bills of the first days of the Biden administration did nothing to advance the causes they claimed to, and everything to help induce the crippling inflation Americans are experiencing today.
KJP’s “answer” to Doocy was a non-answer. Like the non-answers that come out of the Biden administration for every one of its policies, whether at home, where it’s overseeing an invasion of illegal immigration of almost unimaginable proportions, or abroad, where it humiliated the country in Afghanistan, invited war in Europe and is allowing China to rival the United States in the Pacific and even get a toehold in the Western Hemisphere.
The problem for the country is the United States’ future isn’t riding on the result of an exchange between Jean-Pierre and one of the few diligent reporters left in the Washington press corps.
It’s riding on the decisions of a doddering, almost certainly corrupt president in the White House, backed by a political party that long ago stopped acting like it had even a vestige of patriotism left in its platform.
When the curtain finally comes down on the Biden years, Americans aren’t going to be left with the absurd.
They’re going to be left with disaster.
