Fox News anchor John Roberts defended network White House correspondent Peter Doocy after White House press secretary Jen Psaki criticized Doocy’s questions during a recent podcast episode.
In a live episode of “Pod Save America” on Friday, Psaki was asked if Doocy was a “stupid son of a bitch” or if he played one on TV. President Biden had been caught on a hot mic using the phrase to describe Doocy.
“OK, um, well. He works for a network,” Psaki started, “that provides people with questions that, nothing personal to any individual, including Peter Doocy, but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch.”
Roberts, a former White House correspondent for the network, pushed back against Psaki’s assertion, saying that Doocy came up with his own questions and made his own decisions on what he wanted to raise during the briefings.
“Note to @PressSec . @pdoocy makes the decisions on what topics he wants to quiz you on, and develops the questions himself,” Roberts tweeted. “His philosophy is a basic tenet of journalism. Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. If that makes all of us ‘stupid s.o.b.s’, so be it.”
Psaki, who is expected to leave the White House and join rival cable network MSNBC, also complemented Doocy during the podcast episode, saying she wanted to tell a “nice Peter Doocy story.”
She referred to the Biden hot mic moment where the president called Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch” after the Fox News correspondent asked him if inflation would be a “political liability” before the midterms.
Biden later apologized to Doocy for the comment, and Psaki noted that Doocy had handled the episode with class when asked about it by Fox’s Sean Hannity.
“Sean Hannity asked him about the, you know, what the president had said, and what he said back – and he could have been like, ‘He’s a son of a bitch, or ‘I’m standing up for whatever.’ He could have said anything,” Psaki said. “And instead, he said, ‘You know, he called me. We had a really nice conversation. I’m just asking my questions. He’s doing his job.’”
“So I will say that was a moment of grace. You don’t have to like everything Peter Doocy says or does, but that is certainly a moment of grace by Peter Doocy.”