So far, this reporter has remained unnamed, and if he is lucky, he will remain that way. He had the fool-hardy impulse to try Jen Psaki's patience with the "People Are Saying" framing of a question, and boy, did it go poorly for him.
"There have been a number of issues in the last, say, several weeks, in which advocates, allies of the president are describing him as Trump-like. Less in terms of his personality and tone and tenor, obviously, but in terms of policy," he said, attempting to soften the brazen insult of the question. "Even today, a representative of the Cuban government describing the frustration with the president continuing to maintain Trump-era policies vis-a-vis Cuba. What's the president's reaction, and does he accept that in some areas of policy that he is in agreement with the former president?"
Who in the name of Edward R. Murrow does this moron think he is? Jen Psaki, bemused, gave him more rope.
"So, just for the sake of argument here, not argument, but discussion, beyond the representative of the Cuban government..." she started to ask, attempting to draw him out while crushing his future in any real journalism circles.
"Afghanistan, immigration," he began to list, before Psaki pressed harder.
"Well, but who? Who are we talking about? Who's saying that the president's like Trump?" she said, still smiling.
"Oh, oh, I mean, there're, there are, I could find you quotes, there have been quotes in our paper, quotes of lots of folks have, depending on the issue, whether they are immigration advocates or you know, folks in the Afghanistan who sort of watch Afghanistan, there have been numerous on the record descriptions of the president embracing, and it's actually in some ways, like, just a factual thing, right?" he stammered, blathering on, twisting in the wind, saying many things that were definitely words but also definitely not sentences.
"But like, on what policy? On what policy? Sorry, you can name people, or what specific policies," Psaki offered, giving him yet another chance to gather himself to give examples.
"Well, for example, in Afghanistan it would have been the maintaining the former president's decision to withdraw troops, on immigration it's in maintaining Title 42 and keeping Title 42 in place, I mean, there," he finally managed, before the reporter to his left mentioned the word "submarine" to him, just to try to help him along. (In my family, we call that "kibbitzing." No kibbitzing allowed, reporter to his left.)
"The what?" asked Psaki.
"The French Foreign Minister compared him to Trump in how he handled the AUKUS negotiations," he finally spit out.
Dude. Do your homework. You're in the White House.
Psaki decided it was time to put him out of his misery.
"So, look, I take each one of these. On Afghanistan, the former president struck a deal without the Afghan government that we heard the military convey yesterday led to the demoralization of the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government, where he also released 5000 Taliban fighters into Afghanistan," she explained.
"Title 42 is a public health requirement, because we're in the middle of a pandemic, which, by the way, we would have made progress on had the former president actually addressed the pandemic, and not suggested people inject bleach," she continued, clearly enjoying herself.
Landing the plane, she said, "So, I think we're in a bit of a different place. I'm happy to discuss more examples. I think people would be pretty hard pressed to argue that the president has taken any aspect of the former president's playbook and used it as a model of his own."
Honestly, how have these reporters not learned that Psaki is unbeatable?
Psaki: …because we’re in the middle of a pandemic which by the way, we would’ve made progress on had the former President addressed the pandemic and not suggest people inject bleach pic.twitter.com/xMWIGg7KDD
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 30, 2021
