The kibbitzer strikes again.
She's the one who sat next to the hapless, stumbling reporter from Thursday, who asked Jen Psaki a "Many People Say..." question, in a bizarre attempt to get her to agree Pres. Joe Biden was like Trump. Kibbitzer tried to jump in and help the dude when Psaki politely asked specifically which people were saying that, and on which policies. Kibbitzer thought she could rescue her pal. She was gravely mistaken.
On Friday, she failed all by herself with her own question, when she asked Psaki to explain why Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, retweeted a message supporting the progressives who delayed the vote on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF.)
"This morning Ron Klain retweeted a message that was supportive of how progressives who delayed last night's vote on the BIF saying that they were putting the Biden agenda on track, and I'm just wondering if you can kind of clarify Ron Klain's sort of seeming support for that track of ideas, versus what you've been saying all week, which is that you're trying to get this done," she asked Psaki.
With a completely straight face, Psaki responded, "You have caught us. Ron Klain retweeted to send a secret message to the country that we were litigating against ourselves and arguing against our agenda."
The room erupted in laughter, over which you can hear unintelligible protests from the kibbitzer. Returning to her trademark professionalism, Psaki said, "All kidding aside, Annie, I know there have been questions about this, which I was sort of touching on before. Look, we believe in the Build Back Better agenda, something, I think, everybody would argue, many members of the progressive caucus are most excited about, right? About any component of the agenda."
And who can blame them? It's truly transformative, and will create a substantially broader, stronger safety net for the vulnerable people in our nation.
Psaki continued, "I think that Ron Klain, the chief of staff, who I think most people know who he is, was echoing the fact that there are a lot of good components of that agenda, and we should get it done. Sometimes a retweet is nothing more than that. Saying the agenda's good."
Back to kibbitzer's question, how is Klain's retweet supporting the postponement of the BIF vote necessarily contradictory to Psaki's messaging that they're trying to get the Build Back Better agenda passed? Why must the press think in such binary, either/or terms? Why can't they consider that perhaps a delay will contribute to success, and that Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows better than to bring a vote to the floor unless she has enough votes? Why must they create artificial conflict and failure where there is none? Why did they try so hard to paint Trumps failures as successes? Why don't I have a cocktail in my hand right now? Just because it's 8 a.m. on a Saturday?
