WATCH: Biden Tries Being Nice to Fox News — Is Immediately Rewarded with Foxxery

President Joe Biden praised Fox News in his speech rolling out new coronavirus vaccination efforts — and was almost immediately “rewarded” with Peter Doocy’s attempt at a “Gotcha!” based on a falsehood.

On Thursday, President Biden delivered a speech entitled “Laying Out the Next Steps in Our Effort to Get More Americans Vaccinated and Combat the Spread of the Delta Variant,” in which he rolled out a series of new steps to increase vaccination and combat the pandemic that unvaccinated people are aiding and abetting.

During that speech, the president even took pains to praise key accessories to that very crime, noting that even those who have been sources of vaccine misinformation and disinformation and “skepticism” have come around to varying degrees. He even singled out Fox News:

The vaccines are safe, highly effective. There’s nothing political about them. Look at all the people who took a shot at it. They later — we learned a lot of them have already been vaccinated.

From the start, I have to compliment Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He hadn’t made it political. He’s encouraged people to get vaccinated and is continuing to do so, and his state is in pretty good shape.

Alabama Republican Governor Kay Ivey recently spoke out to encourage vaccination.

And even the commentators on Fox who have been belittling this for a long time — some haven’t, but many have — are arguing, “Get vaccinated.”

Look, this is not about red states and blue states. It’s literally about life and death. It’s about life and death. That’s what it’s about.

Biden’s name-check was extremely generous, given the fact that even as some personalities at Fox News were making conspicuous efforts to cover the network’s ass with pro-vaccine statements and a PSA, others on the network continue to undermine the most crucial public health effort of our lifetime.

In fairly short order, the president’s extreme generosity was repaid by Doocy, who tried to pull a “Gotcha!” on Biden — by spinning a falsehood about what he said in May.

DOOCY: Mr. President, one more. Mr. President, you said — Mr. President, you said — Mr. President, you said, “If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask.” And it seems —

THE PRESIDENT: No, I didn’t say that.

DOOCY: You did. I have the quote.

THE PRESIDENT: I said if you’re fully vaccinated in an area where you do not have — well, let me clarify it.

DOOCY: In May, you made it sound like a vaccine was —

THE PRESIDENT: Well, in May, that’s true.

DOOCY: — the ticket to losing the mask forever, and it —

THE PRESIDENT: That — that is true at the time, because I thought there were people who were going to understand that getting vaccinated made a gigantic difference. And what happen was: A new variant came along, they didn’t get vaccinated, it was spread more rapidly, and people — more people were getting sick. That’s the difference.

Now, even if Doocy were telling the truth, and Biden really did say, verbatim, that “The vaccine is the ticket to losing the mask forever!” and danced an Irish jig while he said it… THAT’S TRUE! It was true then, and it is true now. The whole reason the mask guidance has changed is that people aren’t getting vaccinated.

But the president didn’t say that vaccinated people could lose the mask “forever,” and I’m sure Doocy or his supporters would splutter “But but he implied it, is all Peter was saying!!1!”

Except not only did Biden not imply that, he explicitly said that the threat was still dire, that everyone needed to get the vaccine, and that the new guidance was just “for now.”

“We’ve gotten this far; please protect yourself until you get to the finish line. Because as great as this announcement is today, we don’t want to let up. We all know how tough this virus has been. The safest thing for the country is for everyone to get vaccinated,” Biden said at that May event, and went on to add “And for now, after a year of hard work and so much sacrifice, the rule is very simple: Get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. It’s vax’ed or masked. Get vaccinated.”

And during his speech celebrating the 4th of July, the president was even more explicit, describing the looming possibility of exactly our current situation if people didn’t get vaccinated.

During that speech, Biden said that “we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,” but that “COVID-19 is — has not been vanquished. We all know powerful variants have emerged, like the Delta variant, but the best defense against these variants is to get vaccinated.”

He added that getting everyone vaccinated is “how we’re going to stay ahead of these variants and protect the hard-won progress we’ve made.”

For some reason, Biden decided to be super-polite to Doocy instead of saying “Listen, you lying dog-faced pony soldier, this isn’t a game,” and calmly explained himself over the din of Doocy’s shouting.

He’s a better man than I am, but as much as so many of us would love it if Biden and press secretary Jen Psaki would tear Doocy and Fox News one creative new orifice per day instead of bantering with them, the reward they’re looking for isn’t supposed to come from Doocy or the network. It’s from that sliver of Fox News viewers, however tiny it may be, who might still be sweet-talked into saving their own lives and those of their fellow humans.

It’s also the reward of not being thrown off the track with a futile feud, when they’ve got plenty of other idiocy to combat. As I wrote earlier in the week, Doocy wasn’t even close to the most harmful reporter to spew dipshittery in response to the CDC’s new guidance, and despite his obvious effort here to prove me wrong, I stand by that.

Those other reporters — from outlets like The Associated Press, CBS News, and ABC News — played the same “Gotcha!” game as Doocy, but they stand to influence many more persuadable viewers than Fox News. Shame on all of them.

As the president said, this is literally about life and death. It would be a huge help if all of the media, including all of Fox News, would act like it.

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