CV NEWS FEED // FOX News White House correspondent Peter Doocy grilled White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over President Joe Biden’s apparent recent silence regarding the escalating pro-Palestine protests on campuses across the country.
The press secretary initially did not directly answer Doocy’s question and instead responded by discussing Biden’s “aggressive” stance on the issue of climate change.
“I understand that President Biden historically has spoken very forcefully about anti-Semitism,” Doocy told Jean-Pierre during a Wednesday press briefing.
“But this week [Biden] has not,” the journalist added. “He’s MIA [missing in action].”
“Is he that worried about losing the youth vote with these protestors?” Doocy asked the press secretary.
“I’m going to be mindful,” responded Jean-Pierre. “You’re talking about ‘youth vote.’ You’re talking about 2024.”
“Support of young people,” Doocy clarified.
>> PROTESTORS PREVENT JEWISH STUDENTS FROM GOING TO CLASS, LIBRARY <<
“I have to say what I have to say,” the White House spokeswoman said. “I’ll speak more broadly. I can’t speak to youth, and support, and voters. That’s not something I can do from here.”
“The president has taken a lot of policy actions here, that he knows that young people care about,” Jean-Pierre continued. “And a lot of those actions are popular with those young folks – whether it’s … student debt relief … climate change.”
Jean-Pierre spent a few seconds explaining that Biden has “taken aggressive, aggressive action to deal with climate crisis” – without mentioning the protests.
About one minute after he asked his original question, Doocy again tried to get an answer about the president’s silence.
“And you mentioned what [Biden] said in 2017, after Charlottesville,” the reporter said. “[Biden] said about [then-President Donald] Trump’s response then, ‘Charlottesville, for me, was a moment where I thought silence would be complicity.’”
“So, how does he explain, how you explain his silence this week?” Doocy asked.
“The President has not been silent on this issue when it comes to hate speech, antisemitism,” Jean-Pierre claimed. “He launched the first-ever … Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, something that no other president did.”
“In the time since, a school building … at an Ivy League campus got taken over,” Doocy pointed out.
Earlier during the briefing, Doocy questioned Jean-Pierre about the encampments set up by many of the protestors on several campuses.
“Some of these encampments, they had matching tents,” the FOX correspondent stated. “We’re being told that there are professional outside agitators involved. We don’t know if they’re being paid to sow chaos by domestic folks or foreign entities.”
“Does President Biden want his administration to find out who is funding some of these protests?” Doocy asked the White House spokeswoman.
Jean-Pierre responded:
What I can say — I — you know, I cannot — I cannot speak to the organizations that are being reported — that — that’s on the ground. That is not something for me to speak to. That is obviously something that local governments — local official — I keep saying “local government” — local officials are going to speak to. They’ll have better information on that.
Doocy was not the only reporter to ask Jean-Pierre about Biden’s recent silence during the same Wednesday press briefing.
“I wanted to follow up on a previous question that was asked,” said NBC News Senior White House Correspondent Gabe Gutierrez – some time before Doocy had asked the aforementioned questions.
“And, respectfully, you didn’t quite answer it,” Gutierrez continued. “The question was: Why hasn’t the President been more forceful in talking about the protests?”
“You talked about how he’s talked about antisemitism,” the correspondent indicated. “But specifically on the protests why hasn’t the President been more forceful on that?”
“And I hear that the question, Gabe, but, respectfully, the President has been one — the — no other president has spoken about antisemitism than this President,” Jean-Pierre replied.
“That’s not the question,” Gutierrez stated.
“[B]ut I’m answering it in the way that I believe is the best way to answer your question,” responded the press secretary.
