“You know, I think it speaks to if you look at Fox on a daily basis. I mean, do you remember the four boxes that you had that we had on all the TVs, right, which is on my TV right now? So right now, just to give you a sense of CNN, Pentagon, as many as eighty-five hundred U.S. troops on heightened alert. Okay, true. Same on MSNBC. CNBC is doing their own thing about the market. And then on Fox, is Jeanine Pirro talking about soft-on-crime consequences? I mean, what? What does that even mean? Right? So there’s an alternate universe on some coverage. What’s scary about it is a lot of people watch that.”
— White House press secretary Jen Psaki, in a viral video tweet, posted by the House Republican Twitter account on Jan. 31
If you were a loyal Fox News watcher, it wouldn’t be surprising that you’d believe that White House press secretary Jen Psaki was “laughing off” instances of rising violent crime across the United States. For days, the network replayed a gleeful Psaki, questioning an “alternate universe” of news coverage.
However, the sound bite doesn’t quite tell the whole tale. We here at Fact Checker thought this would be a good opportunity to demonstrate, in the video above, how a narrative takes hold.
The Facts
The video clip is part of a just-over 25-minute interview segment with Psaki, featured on the popular “Pod Save America” podcast via Crooked Media. The interview, conducted by ex-Obama speechwriter, Crooked Media co-founder (and ex-Psaki colleague) Jon Lovett — was posted in full on the outlet’s official YouTube channel Jan. 25 — and is part of a larger episode. Below is the full exchange, with the section removed in boldface type:
LOVETT: So I want to talk about the kinds of questions he gets kind of questions you get. I watched your briefing today and I have to come back to this Doocy cat. So here’s my question. He always puts out a gotcha question. Like today, he basically asked two. One was, does President Biden think parents should be under the boot of nameless bureaucrats when it comes to their children’s education? And the other was, does President Biden think crime is good? You do not fall for any of this bait. To your credit, though, I think someone much worse at your job would also not fall for these questions. Are you worried that he’s not adjusting, that there’s not a new strategy to try to catch you in some kind of a gotcha question?PSAKI: You know, I am not here to work for Peter Doocy or Fox, but I will say that, you know, if you look at how it’s portrayed and how my answers are portrayed, even when I say no, we don’t think crime is good, and here’s all the things we’ve done, including the thing that makes, I think, makes Republicans crazy. Just anecdotally by the hate tweets I get on Twitter when I say this is that they’ve voted against funding for local cops programs because the American Rescue Plan, also that Biden has supported $300 billion more in funding. And at the same time, he also thinks we need police reform. It’s like they don’t know what to do with that. But every time we say that, it makes them crazy. You know, I think it speaks to if you look at Fox on a daily basis. I mean, do you remember the four boxes that you had that we had on all the TVs, right, which is on my TV right now? So right now, just to give you a sense of CNN, Pentagon, as many as eighty-five hundred U.S. troops on heightened alert. Okay, true. Same on MSNBC. CNBC is doing their own thing about the market. And then on Fox, is Jeanine Pirro talking about soft on crime consequences? I mean, what? What does that even mean? Right? So there’s an alternate universe on some coverage. What’s scary about it is a lot of people watch that and they think that the president isn’t doing anything to address people’s safety in New York, and that couldn’t be further from the truth or other places.
In other words, Psaki wasn’t randomly striking out against Fox News, she was actually responding to a direct question about an exchange between her and Fox News reporter Peter Doocy during the Jan. 24 White House briefing. She was arguing that Republicans paint a distorted portrait of the Biden administration’s efforts to support police, but that point got left on the cutting room floor. The clip even snipped Psaki in mid-sentence to remove her observation that the claim that President Biden was not addressing public safety “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Psaki routinely takes questions from Fox News, One America News and other outlets that may be perceived as “hostile” to the Biden administration — and exchanges between her and Doocy are at times tense. Doocy, as you may recall, recently made waves for the hot mic moment his abrupt line of questioning created for Biden last month.
Psaki’s edited comments quickly picked up steam, despite her offering clarifying remarks to Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich on Jan. 31, and releasing a transcript with the missing context highlighted later that same day. Psaki’s efforts did little to dissuade the negative coverage. For its part, the House Republican Twitter account was unrepentant — doubling down with this response.
No deception, just your words.
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) February 1, 2022
You should probably just sit this one out and “have a margarita.”pic.twitter.com/oRXyuPeEh0
As illustrated in the video above, the outrage machine at Fox was more than happy to seize on the comments, which supplied days of coverage. Among the shows that featured discussion of her statement: “Fox & Friends,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “Gutfeld!,” “Outnumbered,” “America’s Newsroom,” and of course “The Five.”
The Bottom Line
The use of this clip is an example of manipulated video — what we label “isolation” under our guide to manipulated video — because it’s intended to create a false narrative that doesn’t reflect the event as it occurred.
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