White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre channeled her inner Jen Psaki today when she took aim and fired hard at one White House correspondent who lobbed a question based on nothing more than gossip at her during today’s press briefing.
CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe seemed to think he really had Jean-Pierre over a barrel this evening when he questioned the Deputy Press Secretary about a report hailing from his own outlet regarding an alleged disagreement within President Biden’s administration regarding possibly ceasing to use health policy in relation to immigration. But you best believe it only lasted a moment.
“We obtained a nine-page Homeland Security plan from July that would end the Title 42 border policy for families with children by, among other things, offering Covid-19 vaccines to all adult family members,” O’Keefe said during today’s presser. “But, according to several presidential appointees, the plan was scratched because top White House officials, including Susan Rice, expressed concerns about the political optics of unwinding this pandemic policy as the delta variant spread.”
The CBS News correspondent went on to ask, “What would you say to critics of the administration’s immigration policy and medical officials who say Title 42 is junk science. Even Democrats … [say] political considerations are guiding this administration’s border policies?”
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But Karine wasn’t having it, ultimately declining to “get into or respond to the gossip” adding “that’s not something we’re going to do.”
“You know every single member of this administration,” Jean-Pierre continued but was abruptly and rather rudely interrupted by O’Keefe who said, “Several political appointees, I wouldn’t call it gossip.”
Jean-Pierre snapped back at O’Keefe with a simple but fully loaded, “Okay. That’s your opinion.”
Finally able to complete her response, Karine continued:
But every single member of this administration from the president on down is committed to building a fair and orderly immigration system. That’s what we’re committed to doing. And in a short period ever time, the Biden administration continues to make considerable progress on turning the page and undoing the chaos, the cruelty and the misplaced priorities of the Trump administration.
So our vision for immigration is rooted in ideas that work like addressing root causes, expanding refugee processing, investing in the asylum process, creating a fair and orderly pathway. The previous administration separated families and wasted tax dollars and on an ineffective wall. We have been trying to undo that. We have been trying to make sure that we do it in a moral way, in a humanitarian way and that’s going to be the focus of this administration.”
O’Keefe couldn’t leave that alone, it seemed, going on to ask if “political considerations are a part of the administration’s immigration policy.”
“I’m just not going to speak to,” Karine shot back, “like I said, we believe it’s gossip and I’m not going to speak to it.”
You can watch the clip here:
Karine Jean-Pierre tells @edokeefe that Biden administration disagreements about Title 42 — a Trump-era pandemic policy to expel migrant families — are “gossip.” CBS News reported this week that the administration shelved plans to stop using the policy https://t.co/mOGwKXWt4z pic.twitter.com/fep4319e5a
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 4, 2021
Featured image via screen capture
