Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

‘Obviously Of No Use To The Country’: Hugh Hewitt Says All But One White House Reporter Should Be Banned

Fox News' Peter Doocy and Karine Jean-Pierre [Screenshot/White House press briefing]

Radio host Hugh Hewitt said Monday that President-elect Donald Trump should kick nearly every White House correspondent out, citing their failure to cover President Joe Biden’s health issues.

A Wall Street Journal article published Thursday revealed White House aides “insulated” Biden, even from cabinet members, as his health declined. Hewitt told author Bethany Mandel that most media outlets failed to cover “the number one thing” going on in the Biden White House, revealing the only reporter he would allow in.

“With the exception of [Fox News White House Correspondent] Peter Doocy, I would ban everyone from the White House press room who’s been in there for the past four years, because they are obviously of no use to the country,” Hewitt said. “They didn’t tell us the number one thing, which is he’s not competent. Why in the world would Trump let them in?”

Similar articles about Biden’s health published by the Wall Street Journal earlier in the year generated pushback from some media outlets and Democrats. Daily Caller White House Correspondent Reagan Reese covered Biden’s mental decline in multiple reports and aggressively questioned White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on multiple occasions, including over the border crisis and anti-Israel statements by some Democrats in Congress.

WATCH:

“It’s not really failing in the eyes of legacy media, they’re not supposed to tell us when Democrats are incompetent, they’re supposed to go along with it, because that’s the legacy… I mean ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, those five brands, are broken beyond broken, in my view, after this expose,” Hewitt said “Is there any way you can trust anything that any of them say?”

Mandel mocked former CNN commentator Chris Cillizza, who apologized Thursday for not questioning Biden’s competency.

“Chris Cillizza from CNN was hilarious. He posted this, like, I should have asked more questions and people went back into his timeline on X and found him bullying people like me, like you, who were saying for two and a half years, there’s something seriously wrong with the president, he’s not all there. As my mother used to say, he’s a few French fries short of a happy meal. And now I would like the very simple question answered: Who is running the country?” Mandel said. “Is there anyone in that press room that’s going to ask that question? I don’t think so.”

Questions about Biden’s age and health arose during his administration and the 2020 campaign. On multiple occasions, Biden said he spoke with people who had died, including claiming to have spoken with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and former French President Francois Mitterrand, who passed away in 1996 on two occasions in February.

In September 2022, Biden asked for Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana at a conference on hunger that took place several weeks after Walorski and two staffers were killed in a motor vehicle accident.

Biden also has suffered multiple falls during his term in office, including one at the Air Force Academy in June 2023, falling down while on his bike in June 2022 and stumbling on the steps of Air Force One on multiple occasions. Biden now takes a different set of stairs onto the VC-25 used as Air Force One, among other concessions to his age.