Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told a reporter to “wait your turn” after he interrupted her during a news conference with questions about President Joe Biden being caught with prepared remarks from the press. Jean-Pierre ignored him when he continued asking her about it minutes later.
The cameras picked up Biden’s notecards, which revealed unusually comprehensive preparation materials, at a news conference he held with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday afternoon.
Despite her paper’s statements to the contrary and the substantial differences in the questions, some critics went even further, claiming the questions were “pre-scripted” and that the White House had advance knowledge of the question that Los Angeles Times White House reporter Courtney Subramanian was going to ask.
Fox News Jacqui Heinrich seemed to take the president’s denial at face word on Thursday, although she did wonder why he needed the prep document.
Jean Pierre was “glad” that Heinrich inquired about it. She explained that informing the president about the reporters and topics they might bring up at a news conference is standard procedure.
She said they should have expected inquiries about the visit with the South Korean president, and those questions were asked. So was the questioning on the debt ceiling.
After that bit of non-responsive verbiage, Jean-Pierre said that the question differed from the one on the card.
Jean-Pierre’s answers went on for several minutes as she went into great depth on how and why each reporter was chosen and other aspects of the briefing’s preparation.
Then, Jon Decker of Gray TV started cutting in, questioning whether Jean-Pierre’s answer was a non-answer.
Ultimately, Jean-Pierre never explained why a specific reporter would be mentioned on a cheat sheet with a question Biden could expect from her.
Jean-Pierre filibustered answering Decker by complaining that he was out of order, loud, and rude – a great technique to obfuscate the truth. Biden had prior knowledge of questions that could be asked that were either provided by a reporter or given to a reporter.
Read the transcript of the shouting match HERE.
