Karine Jean-Pierre Refuses To Answer Whether Biden Has Spoken To Kevin McCarthy Or Patrick McHenry Since Ouster
Karine Jean-Pierre refuses to answer whether or not President Biden has spoken to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) or Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry.
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00:00 The President has spoken to Speaker McCarthy.
00:01 You're now former Speaker McCarthy since yesterday.
00:03 Has he spoken to the Speaker pro tem, McHenry, in the time since?
00:08 Has he had any calls that you can share with us with those?
00:10 Because he needs them, as he acknowledged,
00:12 to try to get Congress working
00:13 and to get America working again for the American people.
00:15 -I'm not going to get into any private conversation.
00:17 You're right, the President was very clear.
00:19 He believes that they need to get back to work.
00:21 House needs to get back to work.
00:22 They need to figure out who their Speaker is going to be.
00:24 He's willing to work in good faith with whoever the Speaker is.
00:28 -Just to be clear, when you say,
00:30 "I'm not going to get into private conversations,"
00:31 you're not acknowledging that there were private conversations,
00:33 just that you won't say yes or no?
00:34 -What I can say is, senior staffers, as I've said many times,
00:39 have been in close touch with members in Congress.
00:42 Over the past several weeks, over the past several months,
00:44 that's something that happens pretty regularly.
00:45 And I can say this, that the President himself regularly,
00:49 often, has conversations with members in Congress
00:53 because of his long --
00:54 some of them are relationships that he's had for some time now.
00:57 Just not going to get into each conversation that he's had.
01:00 They're private discussions.
01:02 We don't read out each and every conversation
01:04 that the President has.
01:05 That's where I'm going to leave it.
01:06 -Thank you. -Go ahead.