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White House spox Karine Jean-Pierre defends Biden’s cheat sheet as ‘entirely normal’

April 28, 2023 | | Print Article

The White House and President Joe Biden’s media defenders were forced into damage control mode after he was busted with a cheat sheet during a Wednesday presser with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, yet another sad example of how the octogenarian career politician has been propped up by his handlers throughout his first term in office.

On a day when the two leaders discussed serious matters, including the nuclear threat from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Biden also took questions from reporters on his just-announced reelection bid with it not going unnoticed that some of the questions appeared to be scripted,. Images of the president’s crib notes went viral on social media, raising renewed questions about his advanced age and fitness for the rigors of another four years.

As the image of the card in Biden’s hand with the name and picture of a Los Angeles Times reporter on it circulated, the paper denied that it had submitted the questions ahead of the Q&A, setting up what at least one White House reporter suspected was a planted question for Biden’s top spox, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at Thursday’s daily briefing.

“The LA Times said that their reporter did not submit any questions in advance at yesterday’s press conference,” asked Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich. “So, to people who saw that pocket card, can you explain how that ended up there and why the president needed something like that?”

(Video: Grabien)

Jean-Pierre responded, “So, just to — just to step back, and I’m actually glad you asked that question. Clearly, I would let the reporter for Los Angeles Times speak for herself. It is entirely normal for a president to be briefed on reporters who will be asking questions at a press conference and issues that we expect they might ask about. It is not surprising that yesterday we would anticipate questions that he did receive on the visit with the South Korean president, as South Korean president was sitting — standing to his — to his right, or about 2024, that was completely expected.”

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“And, let’s not forget, we do these briefings every day. And a lot of the questions that you — that you all tell me, that’s how we brief him as well. You all ask me, that’s how we brief him as well,” she continued. “So, look, we do not have specific questions in advance. That’s not something that we do.”

“So the way that we have moved forward with this type of process is that we reach out to a number of reporters who we know are going to be at the press conference and that’s what we did yesterday,” Jean-Pierre added.

Heinrich followed up, ” “And just to be clear to people, skeptics, who saw the card and saw the question number one and might think that that is a signal that it was pre-organized: Did the president have other questions that he was prepared, you know, had similar talking points in case he was asked something on other topics in that same…”

Jean-Pierre cut her off.

“As someone who is part of his, of the press briefing with the president for this press conference as his press secretary, we talk about an array of topics that could potentially come up,” she said.  “And that’s what we do. Just at the end, there were shouted questions and he took those shouted questions. But we also had a sense that, hey, you know, you might get something on the debt ceiling, which makes a lot of sense, which is one of the news of the day. So we cover an array of topics.”

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“So we do our best to make sure that the president is ready to communicate with all of you and the American people. So again, we covered an array of issues, but of course, there are probably the top three, top five topics, hot items that you all are interested in. And so that’s kind of how we forward,” Jean-Pierre added.

The question and Jean-Pierre’s answer left Today News Africa reporter Simon Ateba smelling a rat and he took to Twitter to say so.

“Everything on this video about @JoeBiden cheat sheet is a lie from the pit of hell. First, the person asking the question knows it’s a lie. The @WhiteHouse often reaches out to reporters including the person asking the question to send ‘topics’ that end up being ‘questions’ in advance,” he wrote along with a video of the exchange.

“The @PressSec then prepares answers and calls on the people who have sent topics in advance and those in the front row. The entire thing is rigged, a show, a sham. Even this question and answer session is a sham. It’s known by everyone covering the White House that it’s all rigged,” said Ateba who has repeatedly clashed with Biden’s spox who routinely treats him rudely.

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Also riding to the rescue for Biden was The Washington Post, the once venerable newspaper that some might suggest has now gone the way of the infamous Soviet propaganda rag Pravda.

A new NBC News poll shows that 70 percent of Americans don’t want to see Biden run for a second term, with nearly half citing his age as a reason, being caught red-handed with a cheat sheet isn’t going to help those numbers but, fortunately for him, there is no longer a functional media in the country and the partisan press will do everything that they can to drag him across the finish line next November.

 

Chris Donaldson
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