Shame on the White House Press Corps for Failing to Challenge JD Vance’s Renee Good Tirade

The White House press corps hit a stunning new low by allowing Vice President JD Vance to rant and rave virtually unchallenged, justifying a woman’s death like a wild-eyed carnival barker at a briefing on Thursday.

As a community reels after the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Vance had an opportunity to cool temperatures and divisions with a sobering, healing message from the White House podium.

Instead, he regurgitated uncorroborated right-wing talking points like a snarling junkyard dog, barking about bricks and a shadowy domestic terror network despite a formal investigation into the matter barely beginning.

During Thursday’s briefing, Vance claimed Good was part of “a broader left-wing network to attack and to doxx and to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their jobs.”

Vance’s claims were echoed by reporting in Friday’s New York Post, which branded Good a “‘Warrior’ of the Left” on its cover.

Good’s ex-husband and her own mother, however, claim the 37-year-old was not an activist and had never attended an ICE protest.

Debate over whether or not Good intended to hit the ICE agent with her car depends on which side of the political aisle you fall, but should one of America’s top leaders be implying that a mom of three, who had just dropped off her 6-year-old child at school, got what was coming to her?

It is up to the journalists in the White House briefing room to hold the administration accountable for what they say, but for reasons unknown, Vance was given free rein to go on and on, earning him the distinction of a “moral stain” by the National Catholic Reporter.

Only AFP White House correspondent Danny Kemp had the testicular fortitude to ask him, “There’s not the slightest doubt in your mind, having viewed it, that this victim — you still believe that she deliberately tried to run him over despite seeing this video?”

Sure, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has to do the occasional dance with a reporter pressing for information, most notably with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who has tussled with Leavitt on everything from the economy to National Guard deployments.

There was also the time ABC News’ Rachel Scott peppered Leavitt with questions about how the Trump administration knows all passengers aboard migrant flights to El Salvador definitively have gang ties.

And then there’s Fox News White House correspondents Peter Doocy and Jacqui Heinrich, who, despite collecting paychecks from a largely Trump-friendly network, often make it their business to confront Leavitt — and sometimes President Donald Trump himself — on double-tap drug boat strikes, peace negotiations with Russia, and Taylor Swift.

But on many issues — including the death of Renee Good — Vance, Trump and others in the administration have gotten an apparent pass. In this case, they’ve smeared Good as a “domestic terrorist,” while exonerating her killer as a dutiful government servant with “absolute immunity.”

It does not appear Good was looking to ram the ICE agent with her vehicle, whom Vance tried to defend by saying he was dragged by a car in the past. If that was indeed the case, perhaps such trauma should have kept him off the street in the first place.

EvenTrump appeared to change his tune when confronted with the video:

But not Vance, who instead scolded reporters as he voiced his own knee-jerk reactions.

“Everybody who’s been repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis when a law enforcement officer shot at her, you should be ashamed of yourselves!” Vance shouted on Thursday. “Every single one of you.”

He’s right about one thing. The assembled reporters should be ashamed of themselves…for turning their backs on one of the basic ideals of journalism — truth.

We work at a time where the president, who touts himself as the most transparent commander-in-chief of all time, uses access as a cudgel that he can give, but also taketh away — or at the very least, tangle up your employer with an agonizing legal battle like that whole AP-Gulf of America debacle. The White House has additionally floated the idea of shaking up the seating chart and relegating legacy media to the back of the room in favor of MAGA-approved outlets.

But really, what good is a front-row seat if you have as much impact as someone sitting in the nose-bleeds?

If these reporters aren’t speaking out in fear of losing their place in the storied Brady Briefing Room, maybe they should get bumped. Americans deserve better. Americans deserve truth. And they deserve correspondents who can help them get it — even, and especially, at the expense of any personal, professional ramifications.

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