Karine Jean-Pierre sidelines an African White House correspondent for a fake journalist
Tiana Lowe
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When the government locked down the nation in 2020, the hit Apple TV+ comedy Ted Lasso became a national treasure, a much-needed escape for the majority of the population isolated by school closures, mask mandates, and legally mandated “social distancing.” Hence, there is an infuriating irony that the Biden administration invited the Emmy-winning cast to the White House to discuss mental health and well-being.
Whatever the root causes, including lockdowns, social media, the decline of religion, or America’s addiction to the physical isolation of restrictive zoning, there’s no question that the state of the nation’s declining mental health is a crisis. There is plenty that a president can and should do to address it. For starters, the Food and Drug Administration could make permanent the public health emergency stipulation that allowed widespread telehealth, including for psychiatric care. President Joe Biden could use his bully pulpit to get Democratic mayors to ensure we never again lock our children out of taxpayer-funded classrooms.
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But of all the things that the White House could do to make a material difference, inviting the cast of a fictional television program set in a foreign country is not one of them.
The publicity stunt didn’t just take time away from the leader of the free world. Instead, the podium of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named for a journalist shot and permanently disabled while on the job, was taken over by a group of actors to answer a question from a fake journalist after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lambasted an actual reporter from Africa for trying to get in a real question.
The ensuing mayhem of Jean-Pierre kicking Today News Africa correspondent Simon Ateba has been brewing for months. Ateba, who literally moved from Africa to cover our nation’s capital, has been one of the most vocal critics of the press secretary. But the rest of the press corps has similarly just about had it with Jean-Pierre and her habit of sticking solely to her binder of prepared talking points during briefings.
“She is arguably the least effective White House press secretary of the television era,” a White House correspondent told CNN in January.
Prior to the Ted Lasso cast’s appearance behind the podium on Monday, Ateba called out Jean-Pierre for refusing to let him ask a question for seven months, deriding her for “making a mockery of the First Amendment.” Ateba was kicked out. The star-studded cast was brought in and allowed to take only one question.
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The question, however, was from an actor who plays a reporter on the show. So, an actual fake journalist. Fake news, not in the Trumpian sense, but an actual person who only plays a reporter on a fictional TV show.
The White House press secretary kicked out an actual correspondent to make room for some celebrities and a guy who pretends to be a journalist on TV. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it’s also so much bleaker.