Karine Jean-Pierre clashes with Doocy over Biden's mental sharpness, says polling 'a little confusing for me'
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre sparred with Fox News' Peter Doocy on how Americans think President Biden's mental sharpness is declining.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre sparred with Fox News’ Peter Doocy over polling showing the American people believe President Biden's mental acuity is declining.
During the press briefing, Doocy asked Jean-Pierre about how more people are showing concern over Biden’s mental fitness ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
"Karine, why do you think it is that more and more people polled feel like, over time, President Biden is getting less and less mentally sharp?" Doocy asked.
"Which poll is this?" Jean-Pierre responded.
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"ABC has President Biden's rating for health since May down five points and for mental sharpness down four points," Doocy clarified.
She answered, "You know, I have to say that's a little confusing for me, because if you look at what this president has done the last three years, historical pieces of legislation, right? When it comes to bipartisan infrastructure deal, many presidents before, like your favorite president, had said that—"
"Who’s my favorite president?" Doocy interjected.
Jean-Pierre remarked, "Why don’t you…why don’t we let the American people guess?"
The two went back and forth for a few seconds as he pressed her further to explain her remark.
"I don’t understand what you’re getting at," Doocy said.
"Let me—let me finish. Let me finish. Let me finish," Jean-Pierre insisted.
"And you'll — you'll guess who I'm talking about, who used to say Infrastructure Week, Infrastructure Week, which was a punchline, became a joke," she continued, likely referring to former President Trump and his administration's multiple derailed infrastructure initiative roll-outs.
"And now we are seeing Infrastructure Decade because of this president," Jean-Pierre commented. "There's the Chips and Science Act, right? There is the Inflation Reduction Act. These are legislation [sic] that is going to have a difference for generations to come, right? And so this is something that this president has done. That's pretty sharp for this president to have been able to do that."
She also boasted about the state of the economy under Biden.
"Let's look at the economy. The economy now, unemployment is under four percent, 14 million jobs created. The economy is in a better place than when it was when he walked in. That's just a fact. That's just the data, and we're seeing consumer sentiment is going up, and we saw just in December how people spent more, and we hadn't seen that in some time," she said.
"So, I think you needed a president like President Biden to get that type of stuff done. Someone who's had Senate experience, someone who was the vice president under President Obama, obviously, and someone who has been a pretty effective president over the last three years," Jean-Pierre commented.
Following that exchange, Jean-Pierre also took a question from Doocy regarding the border crisis in light of Fairfax County releasing an illegal immigrant accused of sexually abusing a minor despite an ICE detainer.
Doocy also tried to pin down the press secretary on how many weeks into a pregnancy Biden thinks abortion should be legal.
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