Did KJP Imply that Cocaine in the White House Is Just a Thing?
Well, this is a head-scratcher.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave a peculiar response to a reporter asking about the bag of cocaine found in the White House.
It sounded like she was implying that cocaine in the White House is just a thing that happens — like a staffer accidentally setting the thermostat to the wrong temperature or a meeting room getting double-booked.
According to the Daily Caller, the reporter asked Jean-Pierre to just clarify for them “where, exactly, inside the West Wing the substance was discovered.”
“I’m not going to get into specifics,”Jean-Pierre responded, “What I can say is when people visit the West Wing, there is an — there is the area of the West Wing where it is highly traveled, and that is what happens.”
.@CBSNewsRadio‘s @StevenPortnoy: “Can you just clarify for us where exactly inside the West Wing [cocaine] was discovered?”
KJP: “I’m not going to get into specifics…There is the area of the West Wing where it is highly traveled & that is what happened…It’s highly traveled” pic.twitter.com/l4INWU9Q8R
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 5, 2023
KJP downplays cocaine being found at the White House:
“When people visit the West Wing, there is the area of the West Wing where it is highly traveled, and that is what happens.” pic.twitter.com/J6YgcgxCBR
— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) July 5, 2023
The first part of the answer is confusing enough. Why couldn’t she go into specifics? Are there national security implications to mentioning which room the cocaine was found in?
Or was it simply that specifying where the cocaine was found would take away the White House’s flexibility to change the reported location as needed?
But the second part of Jean-Pierre’s response is even more astounding: The West Wing “is highly traveled, and that is what happens.”
Think about that response again, keeping in mind that she is referring to an illegal drug being found in the symbolic epicenter of this country: “That is what happens.”
That sounds like something you would expect to hear from the owner of a cheap motel when you complain that your belongings were stolen, not from the press secretary of the president of the most powerful government in the world.
Are baggies of cocaine an everyday occurrence in this “highly traveled” area of the presidential residence? Surely Jean-Pierre cannot possibly be suggesting that this is anything resembling a normal occurrence.
Most of us don’t live in one of the most protected houses in the world, but I’m betting if you suddenly found a bag of coke in your foyer, you wouldn’t just brush it off with, “Hey we had a few neighbors over here yesterday and that is what happens.”
The Daily Caller reported that the Secret Service initially thought the substance was anthrax, prompting an evacuation of the building.
What does it signal to our enemies that a bag resembling anthrax was able to get through security and be found inside the president’s residence, and his press secretary as much as shrugged her shoulders and said, “That is what happens”?
Of course, no one really knows for sure what Jean-Pierre meant by those four words.
Maybe all she meant was that when you let a known drug addict live in the White House and make excuses for everything he does, “that is what happens.”
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