‘But Isn’t That More Of An Indictment?’ NYT Reporter Blames Biden For Not Solving Guns in Contentious Briefing Exchange

New York Times White House correspondent Michael Shear blamed President Joe Biden for not solving the gun problem in a contentious exchange with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

The massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults, and the anti-Black racist attack in Buffalo barely a week earlier, have thrust gun violence back onto the media’s radar. But as usual, they are simply not up to the task of serving the public.

At Thursday’s press briefing, Shear led a charge among reporters in the room to make a show of pushing President Biden on the issue, even going so far as to suggest Biden is to blame for decades of inaction in the face of the carnage.

He began with about a minute-and-a-half soliloquy about how Biden acts all upset about shooting, but why doesn’t he cancel all of his vacations or imprison lawmakers or appoint “a czar of gun things”:

And then just, you know, going back to the question that I’m sure, you know, everybody has been asking, which is the, sort of “what is the President going to do and can do,” you talk a lot about the outrage. You talk a lot about that he wants Congress to act. You talk a lot about the emotion. I was in this room — I think a lot of the other people — a lot of people here were too — when the President Obama cried at that very podium hours after the Newtown — Newtown shootings.

There have been a million shootings since then, lots of expressions of outrage, lots of expressions of wanting the — wanting Congress to act. They haven’t.

I mean, there are people out there — saw several of them on TV today — who say this President needs to do more than all of that. This President needs to declare a national emergency. He needs to create task forces. He needs to create, you know, a czar of gun things. He needs to say he’s not leaving this building, cancel his vacations. Tell Congress — you know, members from Congress to get in a room and not — not leave until they — you know, until they got a solution, and not accept some of the sort of half measures that, you know, are sort of being offered.

And I guess the question is: Why — why isn’t he doing of that?

Jean-Pierre pointed out the fact that Biden has been a leader on gun control since the time of Christ, and that he led the effort to get a deal in the wake of Newtown, and brain genius Shear was like so it’s definitely his fault guns aren’t solved:

But isn’t that more of an indictment than it is a plus to say that the current President has been involved in this for more than — you know, more than — you know for decades and it’s not being fixed? These things are happening over and over again.

“But look, Michael, we are frustrated as well. We are angry as well,” Jean-Pierre said, then spent another minute or so dueling with Shear about why the president hasn’t been doing as much as he can even harder or something. She did as good a job as she could without the benefit of an anger translator.

Luckily, I am not constrained in this way.

Shear’s performance was infuriating on a number of levels, not the least of which is, as Jean-Pierre noted, President Biden has spent decades fighting for gun reform, and is one of the last people to ever have succeeded at it, and as our pal Mikey knows, every effort at any progress whatsoever has been blocked at every turn since the early 2000s, not by an unwillingness to sign executive orders or appoint czars or skip vacations or form task forces, but by (say it with me, Mike) Republicans.

The line of questioning, and the follow-ups, are incredibly bad-faith just on the substance. But the next two questioners brought into stark relief just what game is being played here.

Next up was NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker, who similarly worked Jean-Pierre out for cred points, at one point manufacturing a clash over just how tippy-top Biden should make guns. KJP’s irritation was palpable:

MS. WELKER: The President campaigned on a promise to be able to bring Democrats and Republicans together to get the hard things done. Why has he not been able to bring them together to make this a legislative priority to even get a small measure done when it comes to (inaudible)?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Well, I think that’s what Senator Schumer is trying to do.

MS. WELKER: Yeah, but why not do that in the early days of his presidency?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Well, we have been talking to Congress before these two shootings that have been clearly very public and very devastating and horrific in this past two weeks. We’re doing it now.

Look, we know that this is not easy. We’re not saying that this is easy. And the President is doing everything that he can to get this done, but we have — we’re going to continue to call on Congress to act.

MS. WELKER: Does this now move to the top of his —

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: It’s a priority.

MS. WELKER: — legislative priorities, above Build Back Better —

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: It’s —

MS. WELKER: — above COVID relief? Does this now need to be the singular focus of —

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I’ve —

MS. WELKER: — all of Washington D.C.?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Kristen, I would argue that this has been a top priority from the — from the time —

MS. WELKER: But the singular focus for the President and lawmakers?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I’m — I’m not going to list out his — the one, two, or three of priority. What I can tell you is this has been a top priority.

Welker also asked why Biden doesn’t make a czar, and why not have that czar be Vice President Kamala Harris, then proceeded to nod along like a bobblehead when Fox News’s Gillian Turner grilled KJP about Biden forming a task force.

MS. TURNER: Karine, given everything you just laid out, and the President said yesterday he will use every tool that’s available, I guess, why hasn’t he stood up a task force — an interagency task force on preventing gun violence? He has done it dozens of times on everything from COVID to unionizing since the start of his presidency. There’s also an outstanding request, I believe, from House Democrats over the past year that he appoint a national director — I guess a czar, as Kristen said — and start a task force.

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Well, I just —

MS. TURNER: Is that something he is going to consider?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I just walked through a whole-of-government approach that we’re taking — that’s how important this is — across departments here at the White House and also with several agencies. We’re talking about the DOJ — Department of Justice. We’re talking about HHS. All very much involved here on — on how we’re moving forward. You know —

MS. TURNER: But, I guess, why not make an official interagency task force?

And so it went.

Again, Welker and Turner and everyone else in that room already knows that Joe Biden literally never stops talking about how he was able to pass an assault weapons ban, and so we should be able to do something, and they all know that the President has a 50/50 Senate with at least two votes against quashing the filibuster and voting on gun laws with a simple majority, and that Republicans shot down even the most watered-down gun regulations every time there has been a massacre — of 20 children, of 550 people shot at a country music concert, after every racist massacre by someone following an ideology that many of them openly espoused, and so on and so on and so on, as the shampoo commercial says. They know that any executive order he signs will be immediately undone by the next Republican president, and in the meantime will be used as a bludgeon to portray him as a tyrant even as said executive order does very little to solve the problem. They all know this.

They do this anyway as a way to appear more credible, to get brownie points from the both-sides crowd, but there’s an almost even more infuriating aspect to this.
There is a part of me that wishes the president would capitulate to every one of these demands.

I almost wish he would appoint a czar and assemble a task force and give VP Harris the portfolio and sign executive orders, if only so that literally the following day, I could watch Shear and Welker engage in furtive clashes with KJP over the fact that the president is just “nibbling around the edges” and doing things just for show and the optics and when is he going to get serious, and so I can watch Turner or Jacqui Heinrich or Peter Doocy ask why the president thinks he’s a king, and is deciding to go it alone instead of work on a bipartisan basis with Republicans.

In fact, at the very same briefing, another reporter did just that, asking “Is one of the concerns of the White House that moving ahead with executive actions right now while there are talks in Congress could sink those talks in Congress?”

But there’s an aspect to this that is even more nauseating than the bad faith, and that is the complete absence of any sense of obligation to the public that they are supposed to be serving as journalists. They turn most issues into sick games, but in a week when the nation has watched and listened to the absolutely gut-wrenching stories out of Buffalo and Uvalde, when sobriety and clarity are so desperately needed, it is inexcusable.

Watch above via The White House and Reuters.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.