Peter Doocy needs no defenders
President Biden calling the Fox News personality a stupid SOB on Monday is not an excuse for other journalists to defend propaganda.
On Monday, President Joe Biden was caught on a hot mic calling Fox News’ White House correspondent Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch” after Doocy asked a lowbrow question about Biden’s concerns if he’s worried about inflation affecting Democrats in the midterms. Predictably, this exchange blew up on social media. On Tuesday morning, it was the top story on Fox News. (Thankfully, more respectable news outlets knew better than to make SOBgate a thing.) Right-wing pundits immediately erupted in faux-anger at Biden’s degrading remark toward one of their own. Substack’s most notorious purveyor of disinformation, Glenn Greenwald, called it an assault on freedom of the press and baselessly proclaimed it was an incitement of violence. Other White House press members derided Biden’s comments, stating that if it was wrong for Donald Trump to attack the media, it should be out of bounds for Biden as well.
In an ideal world, Biden wouldn’t let propaganda artists posing as journalists like Doocy get under his skin. He very clearly does not want to give Doocy or similar personalities from outlets like Newsmax and OAN a second of his time, but in the interest of democracy, he does. And when their questions at his press conferences are very clearly attempting to identify some type of weakness rather than trying to genuinely understand his decision-making, Biden’s frustration is understandable. Reporters who work alongside Doocy and make genuine attempts to cover the White House while he messes around demanding why Biden is moving so far to the left shouldn’t feel pressured to denounce Biden’s innocuous insult. They especially shouldn’t feel compelled to draw equivalency to the way Trump handled the media.
Biden doesn’t hold that many press conferences and has been roundly criticized for this. Fox News would like their viewers to believe it’s because he cannot physically handle it at his deteriorated age, even though he has shown that he’s able to stand and answer questions every time he’s done so. In reality, it’s people like Doocy that are making Biden less inclined to be transparent. When he holds press conferences, Biden not only has to answer to reporters from supposedly left-leaning outlets asking him about whether he kept his promise about a “return to civility.” He also fields absurd inquiries about his mental acuity from outlets like Newsmax. Forgive him if he often doesn’t deem that exercise worth his time.
There is no comparison between Biden’s comment about Doocy — the president called and apologized to Doocy not long after — and Trump’s authoritarian attitude toward the press. To suggest that there’s any parallel between the two is wholly irresponsible. While Biden occasionally bristles at bad-faith actors posing as journalists, Trump provoked violence toward the press on a regular basis. He attacked women of color at his press conferences, made fake news a permanent part of the American lexicon and tweeted videos encouraging attacks against the media. He deliberately eroded trust in the fourth estate. Biden, though an imperfect custodian, has aimed to restore it.
This is not to fully defend Biden’s slip of the tongue. The 46th president promised he’d treat staffers with respect upon beginning his term, and it was assumed that extended to the White House press corps. While Doocy likely won’t lose sleep over it, Biden’s utterance provided the fodder Fox News needs to seize on the false narrative that the current president is just as vulgar as his predecessor. Should the two meet in another election, Republicans can use the SOB comment as justification to support Trump once more, similar to how they pounced on Hillary Clinton when she used the word deplorables to refer to Trump’s extremist supporters. Unlike Biden’s reference to Bull Connor while stumping for voting rights in Georgia a week prior, this provocation served no political purpose. The less ammo he provides the GOP to load their rhetorical weapons, the fewer cases they’ll have to craft their campaigns come midterms.
CNN’s Jake Tapper told Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night, “I don’t think any president should be calling any journalist a dumb son of a bitch,” but Doocy is only a journalist by title, not by practice. If condemnation of Biden’s unfortunate insult must be coupled with a legitimizing of Fox News and the employees who work there, it’s best to say nothing at all.
It’s not as though he called him a “lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
But maybe he could try showing a little more (well-placed) toughness.
I have no problem with him speaking out and find it more than a bit disingenuous to both side him with TFG.
Thank you for using the proper term:
Propaganda.