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May 17, 2022

Biden's new press secretary can't fill even Psaki's shoes

By Andrea Widburg

Last Friday was Jen Psaki's last day as White House press psecretary.  If you're addicted to teen girl psnark, condescension, deceit, and ignorance, you're going to miss her — and you can still catch those so-not-endearing qualities at MSNBC.

The big question was whether Karine Jean-Pierre would be able to fill Psaki's pshoes, in terms of snark and ignorance, or if she'd grow beyond Psaki and actually be a polite, intelligent person.  So far, after Day 1, Jean-Pierre has done something amazing: she's actually worse than Psaki.

Jean-Pierre's first act when taking the podium was to announce her qualifications for the job, none of which has to do with merit and all of which revolve around identity politics:

It sounds as if Kamala Harris's speechwriter helped Jean-Pierre out there.  If so, Jean-Pierre would have done better to refuse the offer of help.  Having firmly established herself as an affirmative action hire, Jean-Pierre then went out of her way to prove why her external traits are the basis for her getting the press secretary position.  The interaction she had with Peter Doocy pretty much sums her up.  It began when Doocy explicitly stated that Joe Biden had tweeted out that the way to bring down inflation is to tax corporations.  He followed up by asking how taxing corporations brings down inflation.  Jean-Pierre promptly showed her acumen by asking if Doocy was referring to a specific tweet.  That was bad, but perhaps first-day jitters accounted for it.  Jitters, though, couldn't explain the non-responsive verbal vomit that followed, including the inane assertion that increasing corporate taxes would lower costs:

Admittedly, there was no good answer, because Biden's tweet was dead wrong.  Milton Friedman explains:

You would have thought someone could give Jean-Pierre a little primer in Modern Monetary Theory or high-toned economic gibberish that sounds as if one were actually saying something.  Instead, Jean-Pierre was as stymied by the question as any unprepared eighth-grader is when called upon in class — and she extricated herself as ungracefully as said eighth-grader.  Jean-Pierre was also unable to handle a very logical question — and one she should have expected — asking why Biden was unable to visit Waukesha, Wisconsin, where a Black nationalist (and career criminal) deliberately drove through a parade of White people, injuring sixty-two and killing six, but immediately announced plans to go to Buffalo, where a White nationalist (and mental case) deliberately shot Black people in a grocery store, killing ten.  "He's visited many communities" is not an answer:

When you watch the full version of the press conference, you can see that Jean-Pierre does all right when she is allowed to offer canned answers to predictable questions from friendly journalists.  It's when she gets the tough questions that you can see how inadequate she is for the job.  Admittedly, I certainly couldn't do better, but then again, that's not my job.  It's hers.

If press secretaries reflect an administration, Biden has just the right person in Jean-Pierre.  She's driven by identity politics and otherwise knows nothing.

Image: Karine Jean-Pierre.  Twitter screen grab.

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