OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy acknowledged that he will miss President Joe Biden and their frequently antagonistic relationship.
During an interview with New York Magazine on Wednesday, Doocy spoke about his presence at the Democratic National Convention with Charlotte Klein, a media columnist and features writer.
“I do think people needed an outlet to just be excited about something,” the son of Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy told Klein of the convention after Doocy updated his network’s viewers on the convention on Wednesday’s edition of Special Report with host Bret Baier.
Klein observed that the Fox News reporter and Biden had had a series of contentious exchanges over four years, which had garnered attention. He then inquired about Biden’s perspective on the Democratic convention.
Klein wrote:
This is the Fox News take on all this Dem joy: roll their eyes and wait for the sugar high to abate. “At some point they have to do more than just have fun music for every state and talk about who Kamala Harris and Doug are, and how much they miss the Clintons and the Obamas.” Speaking of, what did he think of the Obamas last night? “It was powerful,” “I’m surprised that now that everybody in the world has a platform to put stuff out on social media, nobody can speak like that.” For “two people who are essentially retired from politics, they had such a command of this crowd.”
We make our way onto the floor, pushing past the crowd, some of whom ask Doocy for a selfie–despite his being in a bubble other than the one he’s usually a star in. But whatever his politics, they still know him. “This particular crowd are probably, per capita, the highest consumers of White House briefings of anywhere I know in America.”
After reflecting on his brief stay in Chicago in recent days, Klein asked Doocy if he thought Democrats had made the right choice in choosing Vice President Kamala Harris to challenge former President Donald Trump in November.
“Based on this week here, yes, but when I was here for the Biden walkthrough, and just the amount that I had gotten to know him over the last five years—when I saw him looking out at all of this, it seemed like he was thinking, am I doing the right thing?” Doocy replied.
Doocy confirmed that he would regret sparring with Biden during interviews and briefings while serving as the face of Fox News at the White House for many Americans.
“Yes. I really will,” Doocy said. “I don’t think it took long for them to know exactly what to expect from me. They knew I was always going to ask him something hard and he continued to engage for years after that and his team did too… and so yes, I will miss him.”
Klein further noted:
Doocy’s interactions with this administration have been sparky. One of his more memorable exchanges with the president came during the now infamous press conference that Biden gave following former special counsel Robert Hur’s report. “How bad is your memory and can you continue as president?” Doocy asked Biden. “My memory is so bad that I let you speak,” Biden responded. “I thought he had a quick-witted response to me, but ultimately that was the beginning of the end.”
This comes as the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security is facing a major new lawsuit that would force the agency to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding a task force established in Pennsylvania to combat alleged “election threats.”
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania announced the formation of the “Election Threats Task Force” in a Feb. 29 release, claiming it would provide “trusted election information” and “mitigate threats” to elections.
The Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) reports that the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged its request for information on Pennsylvania’s collaboration with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). However, according to court documents first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, CASA, a division of DHS, claims it has received no documents or further contact since then.
CASA’s FOIA request followed a March report by The Federalist, which revealed that the Shapiro administration was collaborating with CISA as part of the task force—a detail not explicitly mentioned in Shapiro’s February 29 release.
“In March, the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) submitted a FOIA request to DHS-CISA in order to uncover communications related to the creation of the Pennsylvania Election Task Force, which is designed to censor election-related speech that it deems as ‘misinformation’. CISA is yet to respond to CASA’s request,” CASA Director James Fitzpatrick told the news outlet.
Federal law mandates that the government respond to FOIA requests within 20 working days of receipt, according to the National Archives. In its lawsuit, CASA is requesting that the court compel DHS to produce the documents within ten days of its decision.
“CASA filed this FOIA request to DHS 145 days ago. We are now 80 days from the election, and the public still has not seen the communications on the creation of this task force, which may be empowered to potentially censor election-related speech in the top battleground state in America,” Fitzpatrick told the DCNF. “We are filing suit to force DHS to comply with the law and immediately provide these records to the American people.”
Shapiro said in the original press release that the task force, which is comprised of several federal and state agencies and offices, would “share information and coordinate plans to mitigate threats to the election process, protect voters from intimidation and provide voters with accurate, trusted election information” and “establish clear, strategic communication and information sharing among public agencies and officials to identify and mitigate threats to the election process.” The Democratic governor also highlighted a web page that would “fact-check” claims about the state’s election processes in the release.
In June, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s injunction that had barred multiple government agencies, including CISA, from requesting social media companies to censor posts on contentious issues such as the COVID-19 response and election integrity.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia noted during a conference that CISA and other agencies resumed their collaboration with social media companies in March.
