Depending on one’s outlook, it was either amusing, annoying, or frustrating to see Tuesday marked the 500th White House press briefing of the Biden regime and, true to form, Karine Jean-Pierre ducked hardballs about the left’s court-packing charade, the national debt, and even how often President Biden and Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris actually talk.
First, Jean-Pierre began by acknowledging this being the 500th time someone had taken to the podium that spawned so many “moments together and important exchanges” and thus they’re “proud of” and recognize “the importance of the role you all play” as “a pillar of our democracy”:
KJP: “So, I want to start by saying that today is the Biden-harris administration’s 500th briefing. Yay! I know you guys are excited and then, from now until the end of our term, we will do 500 more. I’m just kidding. Can you imagine? Anyway, guys, all kidding aside, so we’ve… pic.twitter.com/trF4vGN4sd
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 30, 2024
Skipping ahead to Heinrich’s turn and she came out with a short, to-the-point question on the so-called Supreme Court “reform” package like you’d see from her colleague, Peter Doocy:
JACQUI TIME: “Is this Supreme Court proposal just an election year gambit?”
KJP: “I will say this. I think, if you read the Washington Post op-ed that the President put out yesterday, if you listen to his speech, he was reacting to what SCOTUS has been doing over the past — not… pic.twitter.com/gVpvkKYqzI
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 30, 2024
Heinrich had a natural follow-up: “But why would he not then read in top Democrats, including the Senate Judiciary chair, about this effort?”
Thanks to liberal narratives browbeating half the country into delegitimizing the court, Jean-Pierre claimed “the majority of Americans want to see this” and Biden’s claim to impose term limits and new picks every two years came thanks to “range of conservative legal experts and Republican elected officials”.
Heinrich wasn’t having it and fact-checked both this alleged support from a judicial commission and Biden’s own past comments:
The Fox correspondent tried to press on whether this means Biden supports eliminating the filibuster to enact these power grabs, but Jean-Pierre wouldn’t commit to that and instead mentioned conservative Supreme Court justices in the same breath as the Charlottesville neo-Nazis and white supremacists (click “expand”):
HEINRICH: So [inaudible] endorsing eliminate the filibuster then?
JEAN-PIERRE: — I mean, look — we are — he laid out the three ways that he wants to move forward. We’re going to have hopefully a healthy debate with Congress on what this is going to look — what this is gonna look like. This is going to be legislation that we want to move forward with — and — look — and I will say this, you know, one of the reasons the president ran in 2020 was because of what he saw in Charlottesville was because of the fear of — uh — you know, wanting to make sure that we protect the soul of our nation. That was part of it and just look at what’s happened, you know, the last — um — you know — the last several years and the actions that the Supreme Court has taken. I mean, this is a President that was on the Judiciary Committee for almost the 36 years that he was President — right — if you think —
HEINRICH: So, that’s a yes on the filibuster?
JEAN-PIERRE: — I — I actually answered this. I said we’re going to have a healthy debate with Congress on what this is going to look like. The President laid out the three ways that he sees moving forward. There’s — not going to go beyond those three measures that he’s laid out, but we’re going to have a healthy debate and that’s what’s important here.
HEINRICH: So, the filibuster’s an open question?
JEAN-PIERRE: I just said we are going to —
HEINRICH: He welcomes the question on the filibuster?
JEAN-PIERRE: — we — we — we welcome — we welcome a healthy debate on how to move forward. He put forth three — three ways to move forward on this — on really dealing with SCOTUS reform, and I just laid out some conservative legal experts who agree with us, who agree with us, at least on the term limits. They’ve been very clear as well.
Heinrich’s Fox colleague Edward Lawrence later had the penultimate exchange, which focused on the national debt since, as he noted, it “crossed $35 trillion for the first time ever” and there’s concerns in the credit rating agency Fitch that an exploding debt could downgrade the country’s credit score.
Incredibly, Jean-Pierre falsely claimed the reason the debt has gone up was because of policies from the Trump administration.
Lawrence was incredulous and clapped back, even wondering if she knows how the national debt actually works (click “expand”):
LAWRENCE: But — so, you’re saying that we crossed 35 trillion because of former President Trump’s administration? I mean that was four years ago. You know the debt keeps increasing?
JEAN-PIERRE: Yep.
LAWRENCE: You know, at what point —
JEAN-PIERRE: The fact is — the fact is $8 trillion was what the increase in debt was what the last administration did — the Trump administration. They didn’t put forth — they didn’t put forth any type of legislation to counter that. They didn’t. They just let the debt balloon by $8 trillion. That’s what they —
LAWRENCE: — it’s still going up.
JEAN-PIERRE: — but that’s what they did. The President —
LAWRENCE: [inaudible] up in the last three years.
JEAN-PIERRE: — but what I — what I’m saying to you is — like — we can’t — we can’t discount what happened in the last administration and we can’t discount what the — what this president is trying to do — to make sure that we address this. $1 trillion in deficit reduction into law. That’s what the President signed and — and that would lower the deficit by three — another $3 trillion by making billionaires and the biggest — the biggest corporations pay their fair share. Republicans are offering the opposite of that, so I think policy matters. What we’ve been able to get done matters. I’m not discounting what you’re saying. I’m just saying the President is actually working to make — to lower the deficit and Republicans want to do the opposite. That is where we are when we think about the policy. That is where we are, and I think that matters as well.
Elsewhere, EWTN’s Owen Jensen asked if Biden had seen the ugly, anti-Christian depiction of The Last Supper at the opening ceremonies for the 2024 summer Olympics:
EWTN’s @OwenTJensen: “Karine, following up on that, did the President see the —”
KJP: “Wait, no, wait.”
Jensen: “— Last Supper controversy at the Olympics?”
KJP [to VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara]: “Go ahead.”
Jensen: “Do you know — did he see the — the —”
KJP: “I don’t have… pic.twitter.com/Baf0hNO9Wq
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 30, 2024
Likewise, Jean-Pierre also ducked attempts by ABC’s Selina Wang for a basic question about how often Biden and Harris chat:
ABC’s @SelinaWangTV: “Last night, the President said he’s been talking to the vice president about her potential running mate. Could you just explain how often they’ve been talking to each other and when’s the last time they spoke?”
KJP: “So, I — I’m going to be super careful —… pic.twitter.com/HzYHgCY771
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 30, 2024
Finally, credit goes out to CBS’s Weijia Jiang who, while it shamefully didn’t make it to the CBS Evening News or CBS Mornings, asked Jean-Pierre about why Biden said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was “dead on arrival”:
CBS’s @Weijia Jiang: “And then, following up on something else the President said yesterday —”
KJP: “Okay.”
Jiang: “— when he was asked about Supreme Court reform.”
KJP: “Yes.”
Jiang: “What did he mean when he said that Speaker Johnson is ‘dead on arrival?’”
KJP: “So look,… pic.twitter.com/oN9wSmJSdw
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 30, 2024
To see the relevant transcript from the July 31 briefing, click here.
