President Joe Biden called a Fox News White House correspondent a "stupid son of a bitch" after the reporter asked whether rising inflation posed a political risk to Democrats.
Do you think inflation is a political liability? As reporters exited a meeting of the White House Competitiveness Council, Doocy called out to the president.
Biden replied that it was a great asset. More inflation.
He said, "What a stupid son of a bitch."
The Recount is on January 24, 2022.
The White House and Fox News did not respond to Insider's request for comment. After the exchange, he made light of it and said he wasn't initially aware of the insult.
"I couldn't hear him because people were shouting at us to get out, but someone came up to me in the briefing room a few minutes later and said that he was fine." Did you hear what the president said? I asked, "No, what?" He said that they called him a stupid SOB.
"No, nobody has fact-checked him yet and said it's not true," said the host when Jesse Watters joked that he is an "SOB".
Biden apologized for the remark, according to CNN's chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins. The official White House transcript contains the hot mic moment.
Inflation has hit a 40-year high, with labor shortages and supply chain problems helping to push prices up across the board for goods like groceries, gas, and housing, and wiping out wage gains that workers experienced in the past year. The rising inflation is one of the reasons that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has come out against Biden's social and climate spending bill.
Democrats are worried that voters will punish them at the polls in November because of worsening inflation.
During his time as a reporter, he sparred with the White House frequently. During a press conference last week, the president called on Doocy and said, "You always ask me the nicest questions."
"None of them make a lot of sense to me, but fire away, come on," Biden said.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki often gets into tense exchanges with Doocy. The reporter has said he feels respected by the Biden White House.
In September, he told The New York Times that he never felt like he was getting hit down. I understand why it looks like that, but it doesn't feel like that in the room.
January 24, 2022.
Psaki has characterized her interactions with Doocy as "entirely professional" and has said that there's an element of performance in the questions.
"My engagement with him, people don't always see this, but outside the briefing room, it is entirely professional and responsive," Psaki told Mediaite in August. The TV side of the briefing room has a performative component.
In a particularly heated July exchange, Psaki called a question from Doocy about the administration's efforts to crack down on vaccine misinformation "loaded and inaccurate", and she also called him "irresponsible" for claiming that American citizens were "stranded" in Afghanistan.
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