WATCH: State Dept. Spox Ned Price Gets AP Reporter to Admit His Question Was Pointless
State Department Spokesperson Ned Price turned the tables on Associated Press correspondent Matt Lee during a contentious exchange on sanctions against Russia.
Price and Lee had a well-publicized exchange a few weeks ago during which Lee grandstanded by pretending not to know that the government protects sources even when they declassify some intel, and Price correctly suggested Lee was being a useful idiot for Putin — later clarifying he didn’t mean to suggest Lee was a dupe because he still has to see the dude every day.
No shade to Lee, reporters ask dopey, pointless, grandstanding questions all the time. Sometimes, it’s to get attention, sometimes it’s to get someone talking and try to shake something loose, sometimes a bit of both.
In this case, Lee was essentially saying “Why should we believe you” that intel from multiple countries showed Russia preparing fake provocation, and Price was like “Because that’s what the intel I shared with you says,” and Lee, knowing all about sources and methods and declassified intel that doesn’t reveal those, was like “But that’s just, like, your opinion, man!”
But when Price pointed out that Lee’s dogged refusal to accept the information being offered placed his oars in the same directional orientation as Vladimir Putin’s, everybody freaked out. Nuances — like the fact that Lee’s rote skepticism was not informed by any current basis, but on past fuckery, or that other reporters have been asking shit like “Shouldn’t Biden sympathize with Putin?” and “Aren’t we leaving Putin no choice but to invade?” — were missed.
At Wednesday’s briefing, Lee started in on Price along similarly futile lines, but Price managed the neat trick of getting Lee to point out his own question’s pointlessness.
The subject was the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, about which Lee asked “How do you explain to people why you didn’t impose these sanctions earlier?”
Price responded at length, arguing in favor of the impact now and the value of working in concert with allies. Then, Lee tried to press the point that the U.S. would have had more “leverage” had they moved against the pipeline earlier. Price shut him down, and Lee ended up admitting that there was no way to know the answer to the question he had just posed (emphasis mine):
MR. LEE: But presumably you had more leverage – and I don’t understand why you don’t think that you would have had more leverage if it hadn’t been – if these sanctions had been imposed before the pipeline was finished.
MR PRICE: So, Matt, you also raise a good point. The pipeline, when this administration came into office, was more than 90 percent complete. We have imposed sanctions under PEESA on a number of targets associated with this pipeline, persons and entities. But the fact is that had we sanctioned Nord Stream 2 AG, had we sanctioned its corporate office holders, it is far from clear that that would have kept the pipeline from going into operation. What the Germans did yesterday was to ensure that the pipeline is no longer part of the equation.
MR. LEE: Right.
MR PRICE: So by acting together with the Germans how we did, when we did, and the way in which we did, we have ensured that this is an $11 billion prize investment that is now a hunk of steel sitting at the bottom of the sea.
MR. LEE: All right, well, I don’t think you, though, can prove – and the converse can’t be proven either. But you just don’t know if imposing the sanctions earlier would have had more of a deterrent effect or any deterrent effect —
MR PRICE: Well, if we would have made it a sunk cost many, many months ago for the Russian Federation, I don’t think that would have had much deterrent capability.
MR. LEE: Well, it hasn’t anyway, so I’ll leave it there.
Exchanges like these are often framed in terms of who won or lost, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Lee may have been forced to admit his premise was pointless, but he did get a great quote out of Price — that Nord Stream 2 is now “a hunk of steel sitting at the bottom of the sea” — one which White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki would use at her own briefing minutes later.
Watch above via U.S. Department of State and Fox News.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
