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White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was not having a great day on Monday during her press briefing. Indeed, she appears to be getting worse at the job, not better, and I truly wonder if she even wants to be there anymore, given the tenor of her answers.

She never has an answer to anything, it’s always a deflection — ask someone else, ask some other agency who might know something. You get no answers from her.

KJP got a little into the weeds when she was asked about Washington, D.C. as she tried to defend the hypocrisy of Biden’s position of saying he’s for D.C. statehood that goes against the intent of the Constitution, but he’s against the city council’s horrific crime bill so he’s not allowing them home rule.

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: "D.C. is not a state. It's not a city."

🤔 pic.twitter.com/RlsfQTp1nF

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 6, 2023

“We believe D.C. should be a statehood,” she said. “D.C. is not a state, is not a city.” I think she means it should be a “state” but that didn’t come out right. But D.C. was specifically made a district in the Constitution, to not just be another state. But Democrats want D.C. to be a state because they believe this will help them gain more power, for example, by adding more Democratic senators. So he’s trying to play this middle road and it’s not working very well.

Then KJP had more difficulty when Fox’s Peter Doocy asked her about “Chinese spy cranes.” The Wall Street Journal broke the story about the cranes which are used at our shipping ports to help unload and load ships. An estimated 80 percent of ship-to-shore cranes operating at our ports are made by ZPMC, a China-based manufacturer which is raising concerns about national security and the possibility that they could be operating like “Trojan horses.”

“[T]hey contain sophisticated sensors that can register and track the provenance and destination of containers, prompting concerns that China could capture information about material being shipped in or out of the country to support U.S. military operations around the world.”

ZPMC, according to WSJ, “is a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Co., a leading contractor for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative to develop infrastructure and trade links across Asia, Africa and beyond.” In 2020, five units of the China Communications Construction Company saw their access to American technology “limited,” due to the company’s “role in Beijing’s military-civil fusion program, among other factors.”

In addition to tracking what’s going on, they could also potentially be used for sabotage.

The huge cranes are generally delivered to U.S. ports fully assembled on ships and are operated through Chinese-made software. In some cases, U.S. officials said, they are supported by Chinese nationals working on two-year U.S. visas, factors they described as potential avenues through which intelligence could be collected.

The Defense Intelligence Agency conducted a classified assessment in 2021 and found that Beijing could potentially throttle port traffic or gather intelligence on military equipment being shipped. [….]

In 2021, FBI agents searched a cargo ship delivering ZPMC cranes to the Baltimore port and found intelligence-gathering equipment on board, some of the people said. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine what action, if any, was taken as a result.

That would seem rather important, and a grave danger.

So what was Karine Jean-Pierre’s response when Peter Doocy asked the question, one that she should have anticipated? Watch her quickly search through her briefing book for an answer.

Peter Doocy asks Karine Jean-Pierre about The Wall Street Journal's reporting on Chinese spy cranes.

JEAN-PIERRE: "Don't have any comment on that specific reporting. I would refer you to the Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense." pic.twitter.com/SAJoPw9gM3

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 6, 2023

She said that Biden has shown that he will put the American people first. Except he hasn’t done that, he’s shown the opposite, allowing the Chinese spy balloon to enter our airspace, then traverse the whole country before taking it down. He didn’t show that when he went to Ukraine rather than East Palestine, Ohio, where Americans were suffering from the train derailment contamination. Then once again, she has no real response to that specific reporting.

Translation: “We don’t care enough to even have that on our radar to make it into her briefing book.”

How do we not have our own cranes to protect our ports? This emphasizes again the importance of our national security independence, not just with energy and fossil fuels but in other areas like this as well. One more thing that needs someone who cares about putting the security of America first.

Doocy also grilled her on the Willow Project — the Alaska energy project which would help our energy security and has bipartisan support from the entire Alaska delegation. I reported how his team harmed the Cook Inlet development because of their climate agenda, infuriating Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), and they previously stopped the Keystone XL Pipeline. So they have a very bad record on this. Doocy asked her which was more important to Biden — our energy security or reducing fossil fuels. KJP tried to play this game that they were both important.

FOX NEWS' PETER DOOCY:

"What's more important to President Biden: Improving energy security or reducing fossil fuels?" pic.twitter.com/9wbxr7g9V0

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 6, 2023

Biden is trying to straddle the fence and play this game on the Willow Project in the middle of the road. But in the words of Mr. Miyagi, when you stand in the middle of the road, you get “squished like grape.”

There is no middle-of-the-road on these questions. You are either for our security or you are not. You are either for the Constitution or you are not. The problem is that Joe Biden cannot simply answer those questions.