White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre got snippy with a CBS correspondent after she asked about her experiences with President Biden’s dog Commander after he was kicked out of the White House.
“As someone who spends a fair amount of time in the Oval Office with the president, did you ever have a troubling encounter with Commander?” Nancy Cordes asked.
Ms Jean-Pierre replied: “No, not at all.”
But Cordes pushed, “And so he never nipped you?”
The White House press secretary responded “No” repeatedly while shaking her head as Cordes asked another question about the dog: “Were you ever wary of being around him because of the biting incidents that you had heard about?”
“Absolutely not,” Ms Jean-Pierre said resolutely. “And I’ve seen Commander many times, I was never worried and I’ve never been bitten by Commander.”
Cordes then added, “Have any members of your staff?”
The press secretary said that she didn’t have the exact number of incidents involving the First Dog, and then read a statement from the First Lady’s Communications Director, saying she will “leave it there.”
But Cordes didn’t: “I’ve been bitten by a dog. If there was a dog that had bitten 11 or 12 other people. I’d be a little nervous around that dog. Why weren’t you?”
“I mean,” Ms Jean-Pierre started, laughing. “I’m not sure why this has to do anything with me. I was just not nervous at all. So that is not a concern for me. That is not something that, I can’t speak to anything else outside of what you have heard from the first lady’s office. And so I’ll just leave it there. All right.”
Another reporter then jokingly asked, “Will you make the dog available for questioning?”
“You want me to bring the dog into the briefing room? That should be fun. That should be fun.”
