Biden lashes out at Fox News reporter over vaccine announcement



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President Biden and Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy had a heated exchange on Thursday at the end of a speech in which Biden announced a vax or mask and distance test requirement for millions federal workers.

As Biden left the podium in the East Room of the White House, Doocy reminded the President that he had said, “If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask.”

“No, I didn’t say that,” Biden replied. “I said if you’re fully vaccinated in an area where you don’t – well, let me clarify that -“

Doocy interrupted him to clarify his question: “In May, you gave the impression that a vaccine was the ticket to losing masks forever.”

“It was true at the time! a visibly agitated president retaliated. “Because I thought there were people who would understand that getting the vaccine made a huge difference. What happened was that a new variant came along, they weren’t vaccinated, it spread faster and more and more people were getting sick. This is the difference.

Biden then turned on his heels and walked out of the room, not donning a mask.

The president’s announcement came two days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the reimposition of indoor mask warrants in jurisdictions where the spread of the coronavirus is “substantial” or “high.” As of Thursday, nearly 70% of all U.S. counties were experiencing “substantial” or “high” transmission, defined by the CDC as having recorded at least 50 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people in the previous seven days.

The CDC’s recommendations were a reversal of their own guidelines from eleven weeks earlier, which indicated fully vaccinated Americans were free to ditch masks in most settings. On May 13, Biden’s official Twitter account posted a four-second video of the president delivering a four-word message from the Oval Office: “It’s vaxxed or hidden.”

Six months into Biden’s tenure, Doocy has established himself as a consistently contradictory correspondent, such as when he questioned press secretary Jen Psaki in February about where workers on the Keystone XL pipeline that came from to be canceled could go to get “green jobs”.

Meanwhile, the president has always blasted reporters for asking questions he didn’t like. In May, Biden was criticized for telling a reporter that he couldn’t ask a question about the Middle East during a visit to a Michigan auto factory “unless you stood in front of the car for a while. that I walk on it “.

US President Joe Biden answers questions from reporters after discussing the timing of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccinations in the United States in the East Room of the White House in Washington, United States, July 29, 2021 .
President Joe Biden answers questions from reporters after discussing the timing of COVID-19 vaccinations on July 29, 2021.
REUTERS

Last month, Biden yelled at CNN’s Kaitlin Collins after asking why he was so “confident” that Russian President Vladimir Putin would change his behavior following a summit meeting between the two leaders in Geneva, Switzerland.

“I’m not sure he’ll change his behavior!” What the hell? What are you doing all the time? When did I say I was confident? asked Biden, who returned to the microphone to harangue the reporter. “What I said was – let’s make it clear – I said what will change their [Russia’s] behavior is if the rest of the world reacted to them and they decreased their position in the world. I’m not sure of anything, I’m just stating the facts.

The president then apologized to Collins for “being short” to her.

On Monday, Biden called veteran NBC News reporter Kelly O’Donnell a “neck pain” after ignoring her request to only ask questions about the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq to find out about the Department of Veterans Affairs requiring staff to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“You’re such a pain in the neck,” Biden told O’Donnell. “But I’ll answer your question because we’ve known each other for so long.”



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