Jen Psaki's gloves finally came off in the briefing room today, as Peter Doocy went full Tucker Carlson, coming at her with aggressively incendiary questions accusing the Biden administration of things he knows damn well it is not doing.
July 16, 2021

Jen Psaki's gloves finally came off in the briefing room today, as Peter Doocy went full Tucker Carlson, coming at her with aggressively incendiary questions accusing the Biden administration of things he knows damn well it is not doing.

"Speaking of misinformation in the announcement from yesterday, for how long has the administration been spying on people's facebook profiles looking for vaccine misinformation?" he postured.

screen_shot_2021-07-16_at_3.05.03_pm
Alexander-meter

Psaki pushed back immediately, with, "That was quite a loaded and inaccurate question, which I refute."

Of course, Doocy cannot handle being corrected, let alone squashed by a lady, so he resorted to whining, "Inaccurate how?"

She indulged him, "Well, Peter, first of all, as you know we are in regular touch with a range of media outlets," and for her indulgence he rewarded her with more demanding interruptions, to which she responded, "Let me finish. Let me finish. As we are all in regular touch with social media platforms. This is publicly open information, people sharing information online, just as you are all reporting information on your news station."

Doocy vomited more specious accusations into the atmosphere: "So these 12 people, who you have on a list. Twelve individuals. Do they they know that someone at the surgeon general's office is going through their profiles?"

screen_shot_2021-07-16_at_3.06.03_pm
Alexander-meter

She repeated for him that there is no "secret list." This is all publicly available information that even moops like him can find.

"Our biggest concern here, and I frankly think it should be your biggest concern is the number of people who are dying around the country because they are getting misinformation that is leading them to not take a vaccine, young people, old people, kids, children. A lot of them are being impacted by misinformation," Psaki told him.

Claiming to speak for the masses, Doocy proclaimed, "The big concern, though, I think, for a lot of people on Facebook, is that now this is Big Brother watching you."

Oh, please.

screen_shot_2021-07-16_at_3.07.11_pm
Alexander-meter

Psaki had had more than enough at that point, dispensing with niceties, saying, "They are more concerned about that than people dying across the country because of a pandemic or misinformation is traveling on social media platforms? That feels unlikely to me. If you have the data to back that up, I'm happy to discuss it." BOOM.

Undeterred as Wile E. Coyote, he pressed on, "Okay, about things that are on Facebook, I looked this morning. There are videos of Dr. Fauci from 2020, before anybody had a vaccine, and he is out there saying there is no reason to be walking around with a mask. So, Is the administration going to contact Facebook and ask them to take that down?"

Doocy has trouble with 4th grade stuff like tenses and passage of time. Dr. Fauci isn't out there NOW saying don't wear masks. He said that in winter 2020, for a very short time, then quickly changed his tune. Since then, he's publicly, passionately urged mask-wearing thousands of times. But Psaki just dealt with the most important lie that needed snuffing out from Doocy's absolute tornado of bullsh*t in the rest of the short back and forth.

"We don't take anything down. We don't block anything. Facebook and any private sector company makes decisions about what information should be on their platform. Our point is there is information that is leading to people not taking the vaccine and people are dying as a result and we have a responsibility as a public health matter to raise that issue and the responsibility we all have the government, media, platforms, public messengers to give accurate information."

The notion of responsibility and accuracy is, of course, completely lost on anyone associated with right-wing media.

Let's have one last look at the Alexander-meter.

screen_shot_2021-07-16_at_3.08.34_pm
Alexander-meter

We're sorry, Peter Alexander. We really are.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon