![Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason caught White House press sec. Karine Jean-Pierre off guard on Tuesday after he pressed her on Jon Stewart's criticism of the president. [Screenshot Youtube White House]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-13-at-3.01.12-PM-e1707854680740.png "Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason caught White House press sec. Karine Jean-Pierre off guard on Tuesday after he pressed her on Jon Stewart's criticism of the president. [Screenshot Youtube White House]")
Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason caught White House press secretary Karine
Jean-Pierre was off guard on Tuesday after Mason pressed her on Jon Stewart’s criticism of the president. Stewart resumed his spot hosting The Daily Show and took aim at both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump over their age. Stewart, however, first began pointing to the recent report from special counsel Robert Hur that found Biden could not stand trial because of his mental acuity.
“This guy couldn’t remember stuff during his deposition. Do you understand what that means? He had no ability to recall very basic things under questioning,” Stewart said. “Biden’s lost a step, but Trump regularly says things at rallies that would warrant a wellness check.”
“The question then becomes, what the fuck are we doing here, people?”
“Is the president a fan of The Daily Show?” Mason asked.
“Oh!” Jean-Pierre said. “I was not expecting that. I would have to ask him.”
“Did he watch Jon Stewart last night?” Mason followed up. (RELATED: ‘I Woke Up Every 2 Hours Crying’: CNN Analyst Says Biden Supporters Are In Shambles After Speech)
“Sounds like you did, Jeff,” Jean-Pierre said, laughing. “Was it good?”
“He was pretty critical of the president —”
“Oh really?”
“— as well as the former president, and I guess my question is —” Mason began before Jean-Pierre interjected.
“He said this about President Biden?”
“He was critical of both.”
“Okay. Oh, you said as well as the former president, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.”
“And so my kind of follow up to that more jokey question is just does the White House feel like it made the right decision, putting President Biden out on Thursday night and to have the press conference that he did? And related to that, do you feel like the White House’s response, pushing back against the report, was as quick and as robust as you would have liked it to be?”
“I’m assuming this is responding to Jon of The Daily Show?” Jean-Pierrre asked.
“Partly, and other critics as well.”
“So look, you — I think and we believe — the president went out on Thursday on the day that the report came out. It was important, we believe it was important for the American people to hear directly from this president and to lay out in a very forceful way, what we thought about, about the special counsel report, what he thought about the special counsel report,” Jean-Pierre said. “And not only that, he took your questions. He stood there and took questions from all of you. I think that’s important. It’s important, we believe that’s important to do, and then the next day, by the request of the White House Correspondents Association, which we obviously have a good relationship with and respect, we were asked to bring, to bring Ian Sams to the podium from, obviously the spokesperson from the White House counsel. And he did and stood here for 45 minutes, approximately, and took questions.”
“And so I think we are going to do everything that we can, especially, as it relates, obviously, as it related to the special counsel report, which we believe. Let’s not forget, it said there is no there there. Right? It said that the case is closed. So let’s, you know, that’s what they said. There’s nothing to prosecute. So we want to be really clear there. But we also, the president’s going to stand and defend himself. The characterization, the way that report was characterized was not, not just me saying this, legal experts on both sides said it was flatly wrong and it was gratuitous. And it was inappropriate.”
“And so the president’s going to defend himself and — to the American people and make that very, very clear. And so we believe, he believes he did the right thing. And, you know, we’re going to continue to speak on this very, very loud and clear,” she continued.
Hur declined to pursue criminal charges against Biden despite describing him as having willfully possessed classified information covering important national security matters, according to his report. Hur said Biden, if forced to sit trial, “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Hur also said it would be “difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Biden responded to the report by holding an impromptu press briefing Thursday night in which he tried to defend his mental acuity.
Biden tried to downplay the findings of the report before immediately forgetting key facts of his story. The president said he keeps a rosary in memory of his son Beau but appeared to forget the parish it came from and trailed off into silence.
Biden then described Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the “president of Mexico.”