Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about the I guess I would call it the need to create fake
scandals and crises kind of out of thin air in these early months of the Joe Biden administration.
And part of that is necessitated by the fact that while Joe Biden hasn't done everything
I wish he would, he had done and he hasn't done everything perfectly and et cetera, et
cetera, all the normal disclaimers, he's had nothing even close to a major scandal.
And for a while and we'll get to this in the in the voicemail segment for a while, the
focus was on the so-called crisis at the border, which was not a crisis under Donald Trump,
according to these very same people, even though nothing really materially changed from
Trump to Biden, I wouldn't say they've moved on from that.
But now the slightly more conspiratorial enclaves of the right are going into why won't Joe
Biden let us investigate whether covid was man made?
That's the gist of this.
And Fox News reporter Peter Doocy has gone from asking different faux gotcha questions
from one press briefing to the next to just repeating the exact same conspiratorial faux
gotcha questions day after day.
So check this out.
Monday, Tuesday, two press briefings, exact same question back to back Monday is the first
one.
Peter Doocy asked Joe Biden's White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, about an investigation
into whether covid-19 was man made.
Now, remember, I have no problem investigating that.
Dr. Fauci said he has no problem investigating it.
It's just that right now there's no evidence that covid was manmade.
But do the investigation do everything you need to in terms of covid-19.
So this is Monday.
Here is Peter Doocy asking, shouldn't we be investigating this investigation?
Speaker 3: But with five hundred eighty nine thousand nine hundred twenty dead Americans?
At what point does President Biden say, we don't want to wait for the WHL, we don't know
what they're doing?
This needs to be an American led effort to get to the bottom of what happened.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, we need access to the underlying data and information in
order to have that investigation.
Speaker 3: And but he talks all the time about how he's known President Xi for a long time.
So why can't he just Speaker 4: and and we need them for that information.
I think you're misunderstanding how this process actually works.
An international investigation led by the World Health Organization is something that
we've actually been pressing for for several months in coordination with a range of partners
around the world.
We need that data.
We need that information from the Chinese government.
What we can't do and what I would caution anyone doing is leaping ahead of an actual
international process.
We don't have enough data and information to jump to a conclusion at this point in time.
Speaker 3: So is there any amount of casualties from covid in this country that would make
you want to not wait for an international effort and just do it as well?
Speaker 4: I have to say, I think the family members of the loved ones whose lives have
been lost and deserve accurate information data, not the jumping to a conclusion without
having the information necessary to conclude what the origins are.
What we do share everyone in this country as a desire to know how this started, where
it started, and prevent it from ever happening again.
That's something we all share.
Go ahead.
Speaker 1: OK, so that was Monday and Jen Psaki says, yeah, do the probe, do it.
Let's find out.
Peter Doocy wants to frame it in so many of these right wingers, you know, when they seize
on a kernel of something, then they just try to blow it up into, I don't know, popcorn.
He wants to frame it as at what point would covid be serious enough for Joe Biden to want
to investigate the origins of the virus?
And that's, of course, not the issue.
It's already serious enough.
It was Trump and Republicans who downplayed the seriousness all along.
Nobody's trying to block an investigation into the origins.
It's just without evidence right now.
The assertion that covid was likely or probably manmade is an assertion without evidence.
And so we can't do that at this point in time.
It doesn't seem that he gets it.
So cut to the next day, yesterday, Tuesday.
Peter Doocy with the same thing again.
And Jen Psaki actually points out, Peter, didn't we do this yesterday?
All right.
I guess we're doing it again.
Speaker 3: Does President Biden think he's serious?
We hear more about now that covid-19 may have been man made an escape from a lab in China
are a wacky conspiracy theory or based on what he has heard and been briefed on, does
he think that's possible?
Speaker 4: Well, we went through this journey together yesterday, so let's do it again.
So the president believes there needs to be an independent investigation, one that's run
by the international community.
It's an international pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people around the
world.
He believes the Chinese need to do more to put forward data to be.
More transparent and in the second phase of this effort, he's certainly hopeful that will
be the case and he believes that every theory should be explored through that process, but
that we shouldn't jump to conclusions before that data and that information is made available.
Speaker 1: This is straight up kowtowing to the Fox News audience.
The Fox News audience loves conspiracies.
They love the idea that Democrats aren't telling them the truth.
And by Democrats, they also mean, apparently, the public health community.
Now, it's also funny to watch the other reporters try to keep straight faces.
When Peter Doocy is doing this, it's hard to imagine anybody taking him seriously in
that press briefing room, but they do a good job at pretending anyway.
Later, just the cherry on top.
Peter Doocy also framing a question about a rise in crime under Joe Biden.
Of course, the rise in crime started last summer under Trump, much of it crimes of economic
circumstance as a result of the pandemic.
And good job, Jen Psaki actually points it out
Speaker 3: on the rise in violent crime compared to this time last year.
Homicides 113 percent, Minneapolis up 38 percent.
In Philly, up 22 percent in Chicago.
Just to clarify, the White House's position on this is that that is mostly because of
guns.
Speaker 4: Well, first, I'm not sure what data you're looking at, but I think what we
can most data that is out there shows that there's actually been a rise in crime over
the course of the last year since the start of the pandemic, which actually predates President
Biden taking office.
To be totally clear right now.
You're right.
You're right, Peter.
And that's why we are focused.
Well, we're focused on solutions here, and that's why we proposed putting a fight.
We put five billion dollars in the American jobs plan.
Speaker 1: OK, so she gets into reading the statistics, which is fine, but just desperate
to create chaos and controversy.
And it feels sort of wasted because there really are good questions that Peter Doocy
could be asking if he wants to be tough on the press briefing, the press secretary and
the process of press briefing and taking it seriously.
But instead, it's just this drivel time and time again.
Now, I will say one thing about Jen Psaki is handling of this.
Her handling of it is generally good.
And sometimes you see, like, she was better prepared for that.
When you get the same questions every day, you get multiple attempts.
She was better prepared for the covid Origins question on Tuesday than she was on Monday.
But she has to be careful because part of asking the same question day in and day out
could maybe be to create an inconsistency where she says one thing one day and another
thing the next, materially different things, or maybe even a slip up of some kind, which
Peter Doocy and then Fox News and the whole right wing media apparatus can focus in on
and seize on and make like a 24 hour story out of it or even a bigger scandal or pseudo
scandal.
So clearly, she's tired of it.
Clearly, so are we.
But she actually does need to stay on point every time and take the fully answer the question
every time that he asked these questions, even if it's the same question every day because
they're just looking for an inconsistency from her.
Jen Psaki, apparently the sort of kindergarten teacher that's needed in the press briefing
room at this point in time.
Now, let me go briefly back to the lab leak or the manmade theory of covid.
I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to know if covid were manmade.
I would want to know.
There's no question about it.
The other scenario is if covid were naturally occurring, but then leaked from a lab in which
it was being studied, I would want to know.
I just want the truth.
But before we have evidence, it's not responsible to say it's probably manmade and it's not
responsible to say that that possibility is being covered up.
And that's what the focus is right now.
Either the left doesn't want to talk about it.
You should see Don Jr.'s recent tweets about this or there's an actual cover up of the
fact that this was probably likely realistically a manmade virus.
There's just no evidence of that study.
The origins, Dr. Fauci said it.
I've said it all along.
Study the origins.
Let's not make assertions for which we do not
have evidence.