The press secretary has had a rough go of it over the past few months. Her job isn’t getting any easier.
And now Karine Jean-Pierre is left speechless with a major question she had no answer for.
Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy took aim at the Biden administration, highlighting Vice President Kamala Harris’ failure to address the crisis at the southern border, during a contentious exchange with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Doocy’s questions came after 24 hours of frantic media coverage, with multiple outlets trying to help Harris distance herself from the ongoing disaster at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Some outlets even discredited their own previous coverage of President Joe Biden’s decision to name her the Border Czar.
Doocy began by holding up a card that has reportedly been circulated to Democrats on Capitol Hill and to the media. The card outlines the new talking points on Harris and her “official” job regarding the southern border.
“Democrats on Capitol Hill are being handed this card with talking points about the Vice President and the border. Do you know who’s handing this out?” Doocy asked.
Jean-Pierre responded, “I have no idea,” and suggested, “You probably should ask her campaign.”
Doocy pressed further, “So, the first one says, ‘Vice President Harris was never appointed border czar. There’s never been such a position. It doesn’t exist.’ Why are Democrats so sensitive about the Vice President and the border?”
Jean-Pierre attempted to deflect the question back to Doocy, blaming Republicans for the recently scrapped bipartisan border legislation.
“Why are Republicans so sensitive about actually not owning up to them getting in the way of a border deal? Why?” she asked.
She then blamed former President Donald Trump for the failure, stating, “Why are they so sensitive to moving forward and actually dealing on an issue that the majority of Americans care about, which is dealing with what’s going on at the border?”
Doocy pushed back, noting that even the newly-issued talking points conceded that Harris had been tasked with addressing the “root causes” of migration.
He asked, “Do you think that the border would be less of a talking point now if there was less migration to the border, say, if somebody had addressed root causes of migration sooner?”
Jean-Pierre responded by claiming that all progress at the border had been made by President Biden and Vice President Harris.
She conveniently omitted that some recent improvements were potentially the result of quietly reimplementing policies from the previous administration.
“They sought — they — he moved forward and took actions to deal with what’s going on at the border. Republicans continue — continue to block getting resources to the Border Patrol agents. They continue to block actually dealing with an immigration system,” she insisted.
Jean-Pierre concluded, “So, yes, we are going to debunk the false — the false, you know, characterization of the Vice President. She was not a border czar, and it’s not just us. Independent fact-checkers have said the same thing, that that did not exist and that is not true.”
Watch the full exchange below:
Doocy: “Do you think that the border would be less of a talking point now if there was less migration to the border, say, if somebody had addressed root causes of migration sooner?”
KJP: “Well, wait, hold on a second. Did you not hear the beginning of my — it was — I know there… pic.twitter.com/GMQSFScHMK
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 25, 2024
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