Throughout the tenure of former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy made a habit of asking her tough questions, which she often struggled to answer.
On her first day, new White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre signaled this trend will not end anytime soon.
“The president’s Twitter account posted the other day, ‘You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share,’” Doocy began.
You want to bring down inflation?
Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 13, 2022
“How does raising taxes on corporations reduce inflation?”
Peter Doocy just completely STUMPED Psaki's replacement on her first day
This is so embarrassing. She's DONE. pic.twitter.com/Ifuv4aGg0H
— Danny De Urbina (@dannydeurbina) May 16, 2022
Jean-Pierre appeared to be caught off guard by the question, and she quickly looked down at her notes.
“Um, so, are you talking about a specific tweet?” she said.
Doocy then quoted the exact tweet once again, exactly as he had done just a few seconds before.
“Look, you know, we have talked about, we have talked about this this past year, about making sure that the wealthiest among us are paying their fair share,” Jean-Pierre said. “And that is important to do, and that is something that, you know, the president has been working on every day when we talk about inflation and lowering costs.”
Jean-Pierre went on for a while longer repeating the Biden administration’s pitch for raising taxes on corporations, but she failed to explain how this would improve inflation in any way. Doocy eventually pressed her on this question.
“How does raising taxes on corporations lower the cost of gas, the cost of a used car, the cost of food for everyday Americans?” Doocy questioned.
Jean-Pierre then appeared to read a prewritten diatribe about the values of raising taxes on the wealthy in order to address climate change, which had even less to do with the question than her first answer.
Doocy attempted to ask his question one last time in hopes of getting a real answer from Jean-Pierre.
“The president said, ‘You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share,’” Doocy repeated. “Jeff Bezos came out and tweeted about that. He said the newly-created disinformation board should review this tweet. Would you be ok with that?”
The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection. https://t.co/ye4XiNNc2v
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 14, 2022
“Look, it’s not a huge mystery why one of the wealthiest individuals on Earth, right, opposes an economic agenda that is for the middle class, that cuts some of the biggest costs families face, fights inflation for the long haul, right,” Jean-Pierre said.
After some more scripted reading that failed to even sniff an actual answer to the question, Doocy moved on to his next question in an apparent concession that he would never receive a real answer about Biden’s tweet.
As press secretary, Jean-Pierre should be prepared for questions as simple as this one.
Doocy was just asking her to back up a tweet Biden had already sent, yet she was unable to do so.
In the end, this misstep may reflect worse on Biden than it does on Jean-Pierre.
Try as they might, neither Psaki nor Jean-Pierre has been able to cover for Biden’s consistent lies and incompetence.
Story cited here.
