White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday was forced to once again explain basic concepts to Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy.
On Monday Doocy insisted on trying to make foreign policy from the press briefing room, strongly suggesting that if President Biden would just pick up a telephone he could obtain from China massive amounts of data on the origins of the novel coronavirus. He also insisted the U.S. should bypass the World Health Organization’s investigation.
“I think you’re misunderstanding how this process actually works,” Psaki had to tell Doocy. “First of all, we need access to the underlying data and information in order to have that investigation.”
Central to his argument is a right wing theory that the coronavirus was either created in a lab in Wuhan, China, or that it “escaped” from that lab, or as Doocy claimed today, both.
“Does the President think these theories we hear more about now, that COVID-19 may have been manmade and escaped from a lab in China are a wacky conspiracy theory or based on what he has heard and been briefed on does he think that’s possible?” Doocy asked.
Putting her school teacher hat on once again, Psaki politely accommodated him while explaining how facts are determined.
“Well, we went through this journey together yesterday so let’s do it again,” Psaki replied. “So, the President believes there needs to be an independent investigation, one that’s run by the international community, it’s an international pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world. He believes the Chinese need to do more to put forward data to be more transparent and in the second phase of this effort, he’s certainly hopeful that will be the case. And he believes that every theory should be explored through that process, but that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions before that data and that information is made available.”
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