Doocy for the Holidays: Peter, Jen Tangle Over Covid, Crime in Psaki Show Season Finale

Affectionately referred to here as The Psaki Show, Thursday featured 2021’s final White House press briefing and it served as solid encapsulation of the year as Fox’s Peter Doocy tangled with Press Secretary Jen Psaki on a variety of issues (with Covid and crime on Thursday’s docket) mixed in with other reporter questions that ranged from solid to inoffensive to boring to hitting from the left.

Doocy began by wishing Psaki a “Merry Christmas” and then got right to the questions: “So, why is the President saying about this new variant, ‘nobody saw it coming, nobody in the world’ if that’s not true?”

Psaki instead of trying clean up the Biden statements, she essentially doubled-down by saying “nobody…knew that there would be the number of different variants,” “how transmissible they would be,”Or “what they would look like,” so they’ve spent this year “preparing for a range of contingencies.”

Doocy was interested in the nature of this last section and wanted to find out more. “why” Has the administration “propos[ed] 500 million tests next month if you haven’t even signed a contract to buy the tests.”

Psaki went on for a little while and insisted there’s “no concern about the contract being finalized” since “[w]e just announced” the ramp-up “two days ago,” so Doocy made sure to follow-up:

If it is so simple to obtain the tests why not make them available now? Is it me or the American government that decided January was the best time to get these tests, rather than now when they return home from Christmas. 

Psaki responded that testing capabilities have been increased by the government “over the…last four months,”This includes a “quadrupling since the summer.”

Doocy asked one last Covid question. It was about the American website that allows them to get free Covid testing.

[T]There will be a new website available for people to visit starting next week. It’s a large group of Obama-alumni that works here. Will anyone who was involved in healthcare.gov creation be involved with this website’s creation? 

Psaki didn’t engage on the initial Failures in healthcare.gov, instead saying they’re “planning for the website to be ready when tests start to be ready and the website will ensure tests are available equitably and…attained with ready access.”

Before calling it a year on his end, Doocy asked two questions about crime in light of Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) being carjacked on Wednesday in south Philadelphia (click “expand”):

DOOCY: Okay. Let’s not forget one last topic. Are you taking the crime in large cities more seriously than Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democratic member, now that she has been kidnapped at gunpoint? 

PSAKI: Let me first say that we’re relieved she was not injured, and the President called her and spoke with her this morning as well. This is unacceptable. We’ve been increasing federal law enforcement efforts since before this carjacking. And we’re — while we’re giving communities historical levels of funding through the rescue plan to fight crime, make neighborhoods safer by supporting programs to interrupt violence, hiring additional law enforcement officers and providing them with the resources and tools they’ve asked for.

(….)

DOOCY: [I]If the President gives big cities unprecedented levels of funding, and Congress members are returning home to get carjacked at gunpoint by their colleagues in Congress, what can the President do? 

PSAKI: It is an important priority for President. It is clear, the President had proposed additional funding to the Cops Program several months back. We would love for that to be included in next year’s budget. We’d love to continue to step up a range of the programs we’ve had around the country, strike forces that have been helping individual cities, working with law enforcement partnerships to help individual cities, and that’s something we’re going to continue to do. He has not supported the defunding of police. The President has always advocated for sufficient funding to ensure that both police and community policing programs receive the resources they require.

Two reporters later, Reuters’s Alexandra Alper followed up on Doocy’s Covid questions as she noted “why didn’t anyone think of” boosting tests “in advance” since “we all knew variants were on the rise, the travel — Christmas holiday travel season was coming.”

CNN even got involved in this debate as Jeremy Diamond asked some antagonistic questions. One of these was that about the issue’s blunder. asked whether Biden “miss[ed] the mark here” seeing as how he himself told ABC’s David Muir that he wished he had done more months ago.

With Real Clear Politics’ Philip Wegmann not in the room, Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove took up the mantle of pressing Psaki on China with the latest involving Intel bowingWhat happened to President Biden’s communist regime in the concentration camps? sign the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in private, (click “expand”):

WINGROVE: Can I ask — Intel found itself in some hot water overnight —

PSAKI: Yeah.

WINGROVE: — over a statement it put around supply chains in Xinjiang and they’re worried and that they have to apologize to China and the Chinese people. Of course, the U.S. views what’s happening in Xinjiang as a — as a genocide, as you called it. Do you worry that American companies will find themselves trapped, particularly after the President signed the Uighur bill? 

PSAKI: Well, I can’t speak to the specific situation with one company, but I can say as a general matter that we believe the private sector and the international community should oppose PR — the PRC’s weaponizing of its markets to stifle support for human rights. American businesses should not feel the need for an apology for their support for human rights and opposition to repression. All industries should ensure they do not source products that use forced labor.

(….)

WINGROVE – Can you briefly say whether any member of the Administration spoke to any Chinese counterparts before this bill was signed? Do you think there is a risk that China might be offended by this bill being signed? Is there any attempt to make it smoother or less tense? 

(….)

WINGROVE – Why did he not sign it in camera? 

PSAKI: What? He signs bills on camera, off camera, sometimes — sometimes on camera. The bill is supported by us, as we have been leading efforts to highlight human rights violations around the globe.

Skipping the litany of generic and neutral questions, the penultimate question came from the left as a reporter re-upped their side’s demand to have a testing and/or vaccine mandate for all domestic flights:

It’s absurd to require it for international travel (whether it be Americans or other foreigners) but not domestically, when there are so many travelers around, particularly during holidays.

Click here to see the transcript of December 23rd’s briefing.