Video of White House Press Secretary avoiding question on storm aid is edited

Context

Ahead of the U.S. presidential election on November 5, a video of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre supposedly avoiding a question about hurricane aid during a press briefing has circulated widely across online platforms, including X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (examples archived here, here, here and here). 

The video shows a reporter asking Jean-Pierre, "The administration has money to send to Lebanon without Congress coming back but Congress does have to come back to approve money to send to people in North Carolina." Instead of answering the question, the video shows Jean-Pierre walking away from the press briefing and saying, "Thanks, everybody."

In an X post seen by over two million viewers, the video was shared with the caption "Nobody wants 4 more years of this" (an example is archived here). 

However, Logically Facts found that the video has been edited. In the full version of the video, Jean-Pierre does answer the reporter's question.

In fact

A reverse image search of some of the keyframes of the video led us to a YouTube video published by the White House headlined, "10/07/24: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre." The video shows the full exchange between Jean-Pierre and the reporter and Jean-Pierre's response to the question [from time stamp 46:02]. 

During the White House press briefing, reporter Peter Doocy from Fox News asked about Congress approving money to send to North Carolina. 

The Press Secretary Jean-Pierre responded at length: "Here's what I'm going to be very clear about: The president and the vice president has had a — a robust, whole-of-government response to this. Hundreds of millions of dollars — I said it at the top, more than $200 million — that we have directly put towards survivors here for the disaster help, and that's because of this president's commitment to make sure that we are there for communities that are impacted."

Embedded video of the White House press briefing showing the full exchange between the reporter and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, from time stamp 46:02. (Source: YouTube)

Jean-Pierre continued to describe the measures the White House took before and after the hurricane, "before the hurricane hit, we pre-positioned more — more than 1,500 federal — federal folks on the ground to help. And so, we have made sure that every state has gotten their storm — requested emergency declaration. They requested it, and we made sure they received it."

After the response, the back-and-forth exchange between the Press Secretary and reporter lasted over two minutes in the extended version of the video [time stamp 47:33 to 49:41]. 

Only after the exchange did the Press Secretary thank everyone at the press briefing; she did not leave after the reporter posed his question. 

The press briefing took place two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit the southeastern United States. The hurricane caused heavy flooding in the North Carolina region, with over 100 deaths recorded in the state so far. U.S. President Joe Biden approved federal funding for North Carolina due to the damages caused by Hurricane Helene. 

The verdict

The video showing White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre walking out of a press briefing after a reporter's question on storm aid is edited. The extended footage shows Jean-Pierre answering the question and exchanging with the Fox News reporter. Therefore, we marked the claim as misleading. 

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