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Make Way for PART ONE of the Top WH Briefing Room Battles of 2024
There’s no doubt at least some of you out there will miss the antics, hardballs, stumbles, and throwdowns that came to define Karine Jean-Pierre’s 2024 at the White House Briefing Room podium.
With over 70 blogs from our press briefing tag to choose from and the topics ranging from the economy to foreign policy to Biden’s mental slippage, Jean-Pierre and the press corps made it difficult for us to narrow it down to 10 or even 15, so we decided to make it 20 and split it into two parts.
Below are the first 10 incredible moments (from January through May) when White House reporters actually did their jobs. While Fox’s Peter Doocy made more than a few appearances, take note of how more than few actually had the courage to join in.
Remember these moments when they sort to partisan shilling in 2025 (as opposed to civil, productive questioning) under incoming Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Follow the links to see the top Doocy Times moments from 2021 and 2022 and then here for the top briefing throwdowns featuring Doocy and select colleagues from 2023.
January 10: Here Were the Most STINGING WH Briefing Questions About the Lloyd Austin Scandal
While 2023 began with the Biden documents scandal, 2024 commenced with the utterly bizarre case of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin going MIA for days while sick (and what turned out to be colon cancer treatments) and provided no notifications to President Biden and the White House.
The Associated Press’s Josh Boak, CBS’s Nancy Cordes, Reuters’s Steve Holland, CNN’s M.J. Lee, ABC’s Selina Wang, and NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez were just a few of the liberal legacy outlets that pressed hard on this.
In Gutierrez’s case, he wondered to whether Biden “think[s]” what happened was “acceptable” and speculated a description of Austin’s cancer-related surgery being “an elective procedure” was “misleading.”
Of course, Doocy delivered, wondering what this said about Biden as President that he “can go days without knowing that his Defense Secretary is in a hospital bed” and “if this saga was proof Americans shouldn’t “believe anything that this administration tells us about anything ever again?”
January 17: Wall of Facts: Jacqui Heinrich Blasts KJP on MULTIPLE Biden WH Lies About the Border
Amid the latest turn in the Biden border crisis, Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich went into fact-checking mode by calling out the administration for falsely claiming Republicans want to cut the number of border agents and that Texas was responsible for the deaths of three illegal immigrants.
Heinrich had this remark amid the back-and-forth about the Biden-Harris White House’s credibility: “[T]o voters, don’t you think they know the difference between, you know, what is a truthful statement and what is spin and is it insulting to them to keep saying it when it was — it’s just not true?”
January 22: Fox’s Doocy Battles KJP on Abortion, Border, Gets Backup from Daily Caller, EWTN
Doocy was one of few reporters in the White House press corps to consistently call out Biden’s lack of mental fitness (something he lamented while co-hosting Fox & Friends Weekend on December 21). On this particular day, he showed his bluntness in asking Jean-Pierre “why do you think it is that more and more people polled feel like, over time, President Biden is getting less and less mentally sharp?”
Doocy also consistently called out the border crisis, asking questions like this in light of a report that Fairfax County, Virginia officials “ignored an ICE detainer” and “released an illegal immigrants from Honduras who’s charged with sexually assaulting a Virginia minor and production of sexual abuse material”: “Doesn’t that go to show that, as record numbers of people appear at the border, you guys have no idea what kind of people are coming into this country?”
February 6: ‘Rabbit Hole’?; Doocy, KJP Throw Down in WILD Briefing Over Border, Clueless Joe
Jean-Pierre lobbed that bizarre retort of not wanting to “go down that rabbit hole” when Doocy asked a simple question about – again – Biden’s cognitive decline: “[H]ow is President Biden ever going to convince the three quarters of voters were worried about his physical and mental health that he is okay, even though in Las Vegas, he told the story about recently talking to a French President who died in 1996?”
Doocy’s Fox colleague Edward Lawrence also had this question about the standard of living for everyday Americans (or a lack thereof): “The New York Federal Reserve just released a report today saying that Americans have $1.13 trillion in credit card debt, which is now another record. Is there an affordability crisis?”
March 5: Fox’s Doocy, Lawrence Battle KJP on Laken Riley’s Murder, Biden Needing Notecards
Doocy and Lawrence were the features almost a month later as, in the former’s case, he had questions like this (prior to one that arguably shamed the administration into having Biden mention Riley in his State of the Union): “How’s President Biden going to fix the border if he can go years without talking to the head of Border Patrol?”
Lawrence irked Jean-Pierre with questions on the economy and Biden’s mental state. On the economy, he pointed out the left’s (clearly) coordinated crusade against shrinkflation with help from Sesame Street’s The Cookie Monster:
So, Cookie Monster posted on X that shrinkflation is making his cookies smaller. The White House official Twitter, or X, responded that blaming shrinkflation — basically on companies. So, does the President, again, believe that shrinkflation and inflation are solely a company problem or do his policies play any role in that?”
The tensions went up a notch when he noticed Biden’s increasingly reliance on staring down and reading from notecards to seem cogent: “The President — I noticed, had — had note cards at the border when he was doing his briefing there. He also had note cards last Friday with the Italian prime minister. Why does the President relies so heavily on note cards?”
April 4: NY Post’s Nelson Draws Out Angry KJP Over Report of WH Sexual Harassment
One of 2024’s many underreported White House stories was the work done by the intrepid Steven Nelson of the New York Post about alleged decade-plus bullying and harassment by Jill Biden confidante Anthony Bernal.
On this particular day, Nelson went on-camera to Jean-Pierre with these concerns and the added layer that “[s]ome of these sources have worked with you” and thus “you’d find them credible” and the cone of protection around Bernal had them “alarmed...it could chill sexual harassment and bullying reports.”
Despite Biden having been elected to restore the soul of America, Jean-Pierre denied knowing anything about the allegations and knocked these staffers for having come forward anonymously.
April 11: OUCH: KJP Gets Waxed by Fox’s Heinrich, Lawrence on Inflation, CNN on Lack of WH Ethics
Lawrence started his questions to Jean-Pierre by fact-checking President Biden: [Y]esterday in the Rose Garden, the President said that when he came into office, inflation was skyrocketing, but it was 1.4 percent in January of 2021 and that was the 11th consecutive month at that time under two percent. So, was the President misleading Americans?”
Jean-Pierre offered excuses about the supply chain, but not inflation, leaving Lawrence to twice point out she was changing the subject. On one of those occasions, he stated plainly: “But the President didn’t say the supply chain was being disrupted. He said inflation was skyrocketing.”
Heinrich also went down this path on the heels of a Politico story about Biden’s first chief of staff saying the President should have talked more about the economy: “We didn’t get any statement today on the PPI index. You know, why aren’t we hearing more from the White House about the issues that people are facing at grocery stores and paying rent?”
As for the CNN portion of that headline, CNN’s Kayla Tausche pointed out the irony of inviting Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook as the bosses of Amazon and Apple respectively to the state dinner for the Japanese Prime Minister despite “regulators in the Biden administration hav[ing] sued both Amazon and Apple, alleging anti-competitive behavior that has caused public harm.”
April 19: Doocy SLAMS KJP Over Biden’s Latest Tall Tale: ‘Where Did the Cannibalism Come From?’
One of many examples of President Biden’s cognitive decline was on display in mid-April when he implied his uncle – who was shot down in the Pacific during World War II – was eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea. Leave to Doocy to be the one who had to ask Jean-Pierre about it: “Why is President Biden saying that his Uncle Bosie was eaten by cannibals?”
When Jean-Pierre dismissed this loony tale as merely Biden having “an emotional and, um, I think a symbolic moment…to honor his uncle’s service in uniform.”
Doocy cut through the thick patriotic defense to state the facts (albeit to no avail):
Second Lieutenant Ambrose J. Finnegan was a war hero. But the Pentagon says, for unknown reasons, the plane was forced to ditch in the ocean and both engines failed at low out — altitude. Why is President Biden saying he was shot down? There’s no evidence of that. And why is he saying that his uncle was eaten by cannibals? That’s a bad way to go!...President Biden said with his own lips he was eaten by cannibals…Where did the cannibalism come from?
May 1: Doocy, Wegmann, Gutierrez Grill Inept KJP Over Biden’s Inaction on Pro-Hamas Students
The late spring was dominated by disturbing chants and video seemingly from a time warp to the 1960s as far-left college students threw in their lots with the anti-Semitic terrorist group Hamas. Biden tried to have it both ways in supporting the rights of students while also insisting he’s a strong supporter of Israel.
NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez snuffed out some waffling from Jean-Pierre on this topic, so he called her out in a brutal exchange, including these (click “expand”):
I wanted to follow up on a previous question that was asked. And, respectfully, you didn’t quite answer it. The question was, why hasn’t the President been more forceful in talking about the protests. You talk about how he’s talked about anti-Semitism. But specifically on the protest, why hasn’t the President been more forceful on that?
(….)
You mentioned that the President has taken questions on this. Again, respectfully he — he hasn’t. He did take a question where he said he “condemns those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” I know you’ve been asked about that. But since you brought up Charlottesville, what do you say to those critics who say that he is trying to have it both ways that he’s essentially, you know, trying to talk about both anti-Semitism and what’s going on with the Palestinians?
After Doocy tried to get to the possibility the White House should look into who was funding these so-called protest encampments, Wegmann brought up the fact that some were ripping down American flags and whether Biden believes “higher education has gone off the rails that, you know, something more fundamental has gone wrong on these college campuses.”
May 22: Surprise: NBC’s Peter Alexander Grills KJP Over Biden’s Student Loan Handouts
The most surprising entrant on this initial ten was NBC’s Peter Alexander, an otherwise dutiful liberal journalist, for having realized the hypocrisy of President Biden’s attempts to massively expand student loan forgiveness.
“[W]hat then is the White House’s message to those Americans who did not attend college for a variety of reasons, perhaps — including perhaps that they didn’t want to take on all the debt that went with it right now that they feel like, in some form, they are responsible for allowing those who did not to pay their fair share,” he wondered at one point to Jean-Pierre.
When she said Biden wants “an economy that leaves no one behind,” Alexander snapped back in what became a lengthy exchange: “Are those people being left behind? The ones who didn’t get support because they didn’t go to college?”
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