Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy tried to trip up White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday, attempting to call her out for tweets she made in 2016 and comments from President Joe Biden regarding “MAGA Republicans.”
Doocy began by asking:
“So if we’re all in agreement that it is incorrect to say the 2020 election was stolen, what about the 2016 election?”
Jean-Pierre put Doocy on notice that she wasn’t about to relitigate an election from six years ago:
“Look, I’m not gonna go back to where we were or what happened in 2016. We’re going to focus on the here and now, we’re going to focus on what’s happening today. “
She added:
“(The president) believes that’s where [the] majority of Americans are when it comes to protecting our democracy, when it comes to protecting our rights, and when it comes to protecting our freedoms, that’s what we’re going to talk about. That’s what we’re going to focus on on where we are at today.”
And that’s when Doocy decided to play his “gotcha!” card on the press secretary:
“But just in terms of trying to understand the new attention on the MAGA Republicans, you tweeted –”
Jean-Pierre:
“Oh I knew this was coming. I was waiting, Peter, when you were gonna ask me that question.”
Doocy continued:
“Well, you tweeted, ‘Trump stole an election, you tweeted [Georgia GOP governor] Brian Kemp stole an election. If denying election results is extreme now, why wasn’t it then?”
Here’s the tweets Doocy referenced:
That’s when Jean-Pierre put Doocy on full blast:
“So, let’s be really clear that that comparison that you made is just ridiculous,” she responded, as he interrupted. “I have been, I have been, well, you’re asking me, you’re asking me a question. Let me answer it.
“I was, I was talking specifically at the time of what was happening with voting rights, and the what was in danger of voting rights. That’s what I was speaking to at the time. And here’s the thing, I have said, Governor Kemp won the election in Georgia. I’ve been clear about that. I have said President Trump won the election of 2016, and I’ve been clear about that.”
She continued:
“What we are talking about right now is let’s not forget what happened on January 6, 2021. We saw an insurrection, a mob that was incited by the person who occupied this campus, this facility, at that time, and it was an attack on our democracy. Let’s not forget people died that day. Law enforcement were attacked that day. That was the danger that we were seeing at the time. That’s what the President has called out. And that’s what he’s going to continue to call it out.”
