White House Press Secretary and New York Times Reporter Get In Shouting Match Over Trump Case: ‘Karine, I Don’t Need a Lecture’

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and New York Times reporter Michael Shear engaged in a shouting match during a Tuesday press briefing, with Shear exclaiming in exasperation that he didn’t “need a lecture” from the podium.

The exchange began with Shear questioning Jean-Pierre on why the White House was declining to answer questions on the prosecution in New York of former President Donald Trump.

Shear noted that “the president has spoken repeatedly about January 6” while there were “more than 500 active legal cases going on during the time that he made those speeches, all of which potentially could have been effected, would have been effected, by whatever his opinions were on the circumstances surrounding those cases.”

He continued:

What is different between his [Joe Biden] being willing to talk about — not the specifics of individual cases — but to talk about the issues presented by, by what happened on January 6 and questions about, just to put a fine point on it, I’m sort of going on Peter’s point, it’s like, and frankly a lot of the questions here, there’s an understanding about not wanting to comment specifically about this case, perhaps. But there are issues that are presented — people have been talking about them for weeks now — when a former president, any former president, would be indicted for the first time and arrested for the first time. What is the White House’s reticence and what’s the difference between that and this?

“With all seriousness, January 6 was a devastating day,” began Jean-Pierre in reply, before going on to claim that “we had law enforcement, police officers who were attacked who died” and describing it as an “attack on our democracy.”

“It was a moment for our president to have spoken to,” she argued.  “When it comes to these types of cases, these criminal, specific cases, we’re just not gonna comment.”

After Shear responded that he was asking why she wouldn’t comment, Jean-Pierre said she had “laid that out for you” when Shear interjected.

“There were 500 cases involving Americans whose freedom was at risk!” he shouted.

“I hear you, I hear you! This is something that all of Americans watch in real time, in real time!” shot back Jean-Pierre before observing that “people died” while crosstalk between the two obscured the argument.

“Karine, I don’t need a lecture on the fact that people died!” said Shear as Jean-Pierre accused the reporter of lecturing her.

Shear eventually held the floor:

I’m not! I’m asking questions and what I’m saying is there are millions of people out there watching today — you called January 6 historic, it was absolutely historic and none of us had ever seen that before — nobody’s seen this before either! There are millions and millions of Americans watching the first time in 250 years, a former president be hauled into court and processed for arrest. That means something, that has some effect, potentially, I suspect, on American democracy and how the rest of the world — the president has talked a lot about how the rest of the world sees the United States in the wake of January 6 — totally valid. Why isn’t that, why isn’t there a similar kind of assessment about how the world is watching us now? Good or bad, I’m not making a judgment whichever way.

When Jean-Pierre replied, she professed to “hear” his question, but doubled down on her earlier point.

“January 6 was just a different moment, it just was… People died on that day, and were harmed,” she said before promising the administration would not “politically interfere” in Trump’s trial.

Watch above via C-SPAN.

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]