During Wednesday’s White House press briefing, the topic of how President Joe Biden and former and potentially future President Donald Trump had agreed to and scheduled a debate naturally came up. Fox News' Peter Doocy even brought up a possible suggestion as to why the current president was suddenly interested in going up against his opponent: bad poll numbers.
After a back and forth over whether or not Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre could even speak about the debates, Doocy specifically asked, "Does a person generally want to debate when they are winning or when they are losing?" As she laughed about Doocy's framing of the question, Jean-Pierre offered, "I am not going to do political punditry from here, my friend. I'm just not going to do it."
"Should we see this sudden offer from the President to debate as a signal that you guys realize you need to change the subject after some really bad polling?" Doocy then asked, referencing numerous bad polls that have come out showing Biden losing to Trump. Even more prevalent is how Trump has a substantial lead on handling voters’ top issues.
"You know, we had a back and forth on polling yesterday," Jean-Pierre continued, in reference to an exchange with Doocy from Tuesday's press briefing. "It just goes back to the core of what I said to you, which is, look, this is a president that has had a pretty successful legislative — especially legislative tenure in the first three and a half years and has delivered on many things that are popular to the American people and we're going to continue to talk about it," Jean-Pierre continued.
For all this "continu[ing] to talk about it" that's going on, the American people just don't seem to be sold.
"We're going to continue to travel the country and talk about investing for America. We're going to continue to talk about how we need to do more to lower costs for Americans. We get it. We understand how hard it is — the president talks about being around the kitchen table and how hard it is to make those difficult decisions sometimes every month on what you're going to pay for, so he gets that. And I just don't want to get into polling any more details on polling. What I can say is the president is focused. He is laser-focused on making sure we do everything that we can to give people — Americans — a little bit of breathing room and that's what the president's going to continue to do," Jean-Pierre continued to insist.
Biden's especially faring poorly on these "kitchen table" issues, and RealClearPolling's averages of polling shows just 24.1 percent believe the country is moving in the "right direction."
Jean-Pierre stressed that "as it relates to the debate, you gotta talk to the campaign about it," before Doocy moved on to ask about debate prep, with Jean-Pierre offering him to let him stand in to play Trump.
Doocy: "Does a person generally want to debate when they are winning or when they are losing?"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 15, 2024
KJP: "I'm not gonna do political punditry from here."
Doocy: "So should we see this sudden offer from the president to debate as a signal that you guys realize you need to change the… pic.twitter.com/zp0q8ZjHhl