During Tuesday’s press briefing, FNC’s Doocy came up with yet another failed attempt at a gotcha. In this case, he cited some old tweets of Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre questioning the results of the 2016 presidential election and 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. He paid no attention to the fact that Jean-Pierre was an officer for MoveOn during those years, not a public official, much less the president of the United States.
Doocy began by disingenuously claiming he was “just trying to understand the new attention on the MAGA Republicans.”
Then he brought up Jean-Pierre’s old tweets. “You tweeted Donald Trump stole an election. You tweeted Brian Kemp stole an election. If denying election results is extreme now, why wasn’t it then?”
As if a few random tweets were the same as a former president promoting election-denying candidates.
KJP was ready for him. “I was waiting, Peter, when you were gonna ask me that question,” she teased. Then she lit into him.
JEAN-PIERRE: Let’s be really clear. That comparison that you made is just ridiculous. … I was talking specifically at that time of what was happening with voting rights and what was in danger of voting rights. That’s what I was speaking to at the time.
And here's the thing. I have said Governor Kemp won the election in Georgia. I've been clear about that. I have said President Trump won the election of 2016 and I've been clear about that.
What we are talking about right now is, let's not forget what happened on January 6th, 2021. We saw an insurrection, a mob that was incited by the person who occupied this campus, this facility, at that time. And it was an attack on our democracy. Let's not forget, people died that day. Law enforcement were attacked that day. That was the danger that we were seeing at the time. That's what the president has called out and that’s what he’s going to continue to call out.
The problem is that Doocy was not just asking the question because he cared about the answer or even the truth. He was doing it to get a Fox News soundbite designed to undercut President Biden’s attacks on extremism. And that’s exactly what Doocy’s employer quickly got up to.
It’s yet another example of why independent news sites, like this one, are so crucial to our democracy right now.
