White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre immediately cut Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy’s questioning short as he asked about President Joe Biden’s mental health at Tuesday’s briefing.
Doocy questioned Jean-Pierre on the president confusing French President Emmanuel Macron with former President François Mitterrand, who died from prostate cancer in 1996.
“How is President Biden ever gonna convince the three-quarters of voters, who are worried about his physical and mental health, that he is okay, even though in Las Vegas he recently told a story about talking to a French president who died in 1996?” Doocy asked.
“I’m not even gonna go down that rabbit hole with you, sir,” Jean-Pierre said, pointing to a different reporter.
“Why? What is the rabbit hole?” Doocy asked. “He said he talked to Mitterrand, I mean.”
“You saw the president in Vegas, in California. You’ve seen the president in South Carolina, you saw him in Michigan. I’ll just leave it there,” the press secretary said. (RELATED: KJP Cuts Off And Shouts Down Peter Doocy After Refusing To Answer Border Crisis Question)
Doocy then turned to his colleagues sitting next to him and asked, “How is that a rabbit hole?”
Polls have shown Biden could be in major trouble in the upcoming election partly over concerns about his competency and effectiveness. A recent NBC News poll found that Trump leads Biden in voters’ perception of these traits by 16 points, 47% to 32%. Another NBC News poll found that 62% of voters have “major concerns” about the president’s “necessary mental and physical health.”
Doocy also asked the press secretary about the long-awaited Senate border bill titled the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act 2024, which intends to appropriate funds to increase the number of immigration judges and law enforcement to detain and remove illegal migrants at a speedier rate.
The legislation would also grant “emergency authority” to Department of Homeland (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to “summarily remove” migrants if the number of encounters averages more than 8,500 in any one day.
“You talk a lot, including today, about how the border wouldn’t be such a big deal if Congress would’ve just passed your immigration bill on day one. Who was in charge of Congress on day one?” Doocy asked.
“So it’s been three years. It’s been three whole years — more than three years — more than one thousand days, and look, this is a difficult issue … and what we have said is that Congress has to act, right? Congress, Democrats, Republicans, have to act,” Karine responded. “But, in those three years, it is true that Republicans have gotten in the way. They just have, Peter. They have consistently used immigration — the immigration system, the broken system — as a political stunt. That’s what they’ve done. They’ve gotten in the way in trying to get more border patrol agents. They’ve gotten in the way of actually trying to fix the challenges at the border. They did.”
The bill has gotten harsh criticism from both sides of the political aisle, particularly Republicans. Former President Donald Trump called on his party to vote against the legislation, and House Speaker Mike Johnson warned the bill would be “dead on arrival” in the House of Representatives.
Biden urged Congress to pass the bill and accused Republicans of “caving” to Trump’s commands.