White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appeared flustered while answering reporters’ queries on Tuesday afternoon as a possible default on the country’s debt loomed, as she found herself contradicting the Biden administration’s previously stated positions on the topic.
Jean-Pierre emphasized that the president had been talking to Republicans for a long time.
An aide to President Biden said on Tuesday that she has “always been very clear” that the White House is “negotiating on the budget.”
Despite this week’s boasting about Biden’s negotiations with House Republicans and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Jean-Pierre appeared on tape earlier this month and in the weeks before that, singing a quite different tune.
First, for almost two months, President Biden refused to meet with Speaker McCarthy to discuss a strategy to lift the debt ceiling and rein in the United States’ excessive spending. Then Biden wasn’t the one “trying to engage” with Republicans.
In fact, Karine Jean-Pierre went into full hair-on-fire mode in February, claiming that negotiations with Speaker McCarthy and “extreme Republicans in the House” on a bill to extend the debt ceiling “would lead us into chaos.” Instead, Jean-Pierre insisted that the limit on the government’s borrowing be raised “without conditions.”