Chris Cuomo says Karine Jean-Pierre is struggling as White House press secretary, in part because she lacks “certain relationships” with members of the media – but when guest Bill O’Reilly suggested he step in to save the day, the NewsNation host said no way.
“KJP is not knocking it out of the park in that job,” Cuomo said on Wednesday night’s “Cuomo” during a spirited exchange with O’Reilly. “It takes a very specific kind of person to do that job effectively. When it comes to messaging from that pulpit, you’ve gotta have certain relationships with people in the media.”
Cuomo and the former Fox News host, author and podcaster were taking a caller’s question when they segued into Jean-Pierre’s tenure as press secretary, and President Biden’s unprecedented refusal to take unscripted questions from members of the media.
“He has somebody who’s supposed to take questions, and her name is Karine Jean-Pierre,” O’Reilly said, referencing a study saying KJP has so far only directly answered 2% of the media’s queries.
“You gotta handle all of it,” Cuomo added by way of agreement. “You gotta handle all of it.”
That’s when Cuomo made his “not knocking it out of the park” comment, which inspired O’Reilly to shout: “You should do it for him! You should be Biden’s best guy! You should!”
Cuomo wasn’t into it – but said he could be.
“No no,” he responded. “I would never work for the Biden administration. I would never work for anybody not named Cuomo. But I’ll tell you what, I would be great at that job.”
To be fair, the whole thing was already a bit of demonstrative bravado – and then it just went to full chest-beating.
O’Reilly: “Not if I was sitting at the front of that White House room you wouldn’t be!”
Cuomo: “Please! Please! I wouldn’t even let you in. There would be such desperation to take me down, that whoever I was working for could do whatever they wanted, and they would be on me all the time.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video clip above.
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