The White House communications team is just a mess.
We saw Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council John Kirby add to the turmoil with incredibly weak remarks about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. Instead of condemning the threats, he seemed to be focused on trying to justify the U.S. position saying we weren’t doing anything differently if she went to Taiwan and no policy had changed. Indeed, he even threw Taiwan under the bus and said that we are not “supportive of Taiwan independence.” He was grilled on why Joe Biden had said that the military didn’t want Pelosi to go, but he refused to answer the question and acted as if Biden had never said that.
Reporters then tried to get a straight answer out of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. They probably could have figured that would be a lost cause. But Fox’s Peter Doocy asked her about the threat to murder Pelosi by shooting her plane down. He wanted to know where was Joe Biden to say “Don’t do that”? Jean-Pierre’s answer was unbelievable, even for her.
Doocy: “It’s been 3 days….since a Chinese official publicly threatened to murder…Pelosi. Where is the President coming out to respond to at the very least say, ‘don’t do that?'”
KJP: “Well…I have not seen those reports”
Doocy: “They were…going to shoot down her plane” pic.twitter.com/9qasGw1LF9
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 1, 2022
KJP said, “I have not seen those reports.” She acted like this was the first time she’d heard about this.
But Doocy himself asked her about them on July 29 when, as we reported, she delivered a pathetic response and wouldn’t respond to the threats.
Unbelievable: Karine Jean-Pierre says the White House won't respond to Chinese state media threats to shoot down Nancy Pelosi's plane should she visit Taiwan.
"We're just not going to speak on her schedule."
Abject, embarrassing weakness. pic.twitter.com/4Biw7DsqBr
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) July 29, 2022
So how can she say on Monday that she hasn’t seen reports when she was already asked about those very same reports three days ago? She even acknowledged during her response that she knew Doocy was asking about “the rhetoric we’re hearing from China.” It sounds like she’s just so used to lying and denying that she’s heard reports that she’s asked about, that she just goes into that default mode, even if it isn’t close to being true. Then, KJP continued just to parrot the weak response already given by Kirby on Monday that failed to condemn China over their threats.
Not a good look to claim ignorance, when all people have to do is to pull the video from three days ago and see that she’s lying now.
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