White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stuck to the narrative — not the facts — the Biden administration parroted after three migrants drowned last Friday while attempting to cross the Rio Grande.
After the tragedy, the Biden administration rushed to blame Texas for the incident. Homeland Security, for example, accused Texas National Guard soldiers of having “physically barred” Border Patrol agents from responding to migrants in distress. The White House, on the other hand, suggested the migrants could have been saved had Texas soldiers not “blocked U.S. Border Patrol from attempting to provide emergency assistance.”
But the Justice Department admitted in a filing to the Supreme Court on Monday that the migrants — two children and an adult woman — had already drowned when Mexican officials alerted Border Patrol agents of the tragic deaths. In fact, they had been dead for at least one hour.
On Wednesday, Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich confronted Jean-Pierre over the White House’s dishonest narrative. She asked, “Will the administration amend its separate statement that implied that Texas officials were responsible for the deaths of those three migrants when, in fact, they had nothing to do with it?”
“They had already been dead for an hour by the time Mexico told anyone in the U.S. about it, and the administration admitted as much in their court filing,” Heinrich noted. “But the statement from the White House implies that Texas was responsible, and a number of outlets were forced to issue corrections and editor’s notes because of that White House statement.”
The falsehood exposed, Jean-Pierre responded by urging Heinrich to be “sensitive” because of the “devastating situation.” But then she refused to acknowledge the truth after repeatedly stumbling over her thoughts.
“Our statement is consistent with DOJ’s filing. As the DOJ filing said, there was an ongoing emergency situation that Border Patrol was blocked from accessing. There were other migrants in the water as well,” she responded.
“That was separate, though. The ongoing emergency situation was separate,” Heinrich fact-checked.
The Fox News reporter then read Jean-Pierre the White House statement — which said that “Texas officials blocked U.S. Border Patrol from attempting to provide emergency assistance” — but the press secretary simply restated her earlier point.
“There were other migrants in the water as well,” she said.
“Then why wasn’t that included in the statement?” Heinrich shot back.
And when Heinrich asked if the statement was referring to those “other migrants” — which it clearly was not because it was released in direct response to the drownings — Jean-Pierre shut down questioning and referred additional questions to the DOJ.
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