Jen Psaki Compliments Peter Doocy While Shooting Down His Border ‘Disaster’ Question: ‘I Do Like Your Mask’

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki paid Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy a faint compliment as she shot down his attempt to get her to refer to the surge in unaccompanied minors at the border as a “disaster.”

After a 10-day span in which a variety of reporters tried to get Psaki and President Joe Biden to call the surge a “crisis” at least 12 separate times, Doocy ramped that effort up at Monday’s briefing by repeatedly trying to get the press secretary to call it a “disaster” because FEMA is assisting in housing some of the migrant children. Psaki refused, but did offer her gratitude and that bit of fashion praise:

DOOCY: And then, on immigration, does FEMA’s arrival at the border mean that the administration feels what is happening down at the border is a disaster?

MS. PSAKI: I know that we always get into the fun of labels around here, but I would say our focus is on solutions. And this is one of the steps that the President felt would help not become a final solution, but help expedite processing; help ensure that people who are coming across the border are — have access to health and medical care. Clearly, the numbers are enormous. This is a big challenge, and it certainly is a reflection of using every lever of the federal government to help address that.

DOOCY: But FEMA, though, specifically — their mission is helping people before, during, and after disasters. We’ve heard you say that it’s a problem, that it’s a challenge. Is it now a disaster?

MS. PSAKI: I appreciate the opportunity. I do like your mask. But I will say that FEMA is there to help ensure that the people who are at the border, who are coming across the border, have access to — can — to HHS and ORR shelters; that we can swiftly place them with vetted families. They’re playing a number of roles there to address what we feel is a significant problem and a significant challenge. And I think we haven’t — we haven’t stepped — been hiding about that.

DOOCY: And then, just a quick, final one. DHS said that the FEMA plan for 90 days would be to receive, shelter, and transfer unaccompanied children. Does that mean that the federal government now is moving beyond the message from the last couple weeks, which was: “Now is not the time to come”?

MS. PSAKI: No, we are — we are — we are doing both, and it’s a complicated problem, no doubt about it. We are sending the message clearly in the region, “Now is not the time to come.” But also, we want to ensure that people are treated with humanity — who are children, who are unaccompanied children. That’s who we are as a country, and so we are doing both.

Doocy’s question contained a quote from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s mission statement. On Saturday, Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that the agency will assist in “a government-wide effort over the next 90 days to safely receive, shelter, and transfer unaccompanied children who make the dangerous journey to the U.S. southwest border.”

Watch the clip above via C-Span.