President Joe Biden didn’t take too kindly to a shouted question by Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy on Monday, calling the reporter a “stupid son of a bitch” for asking him about inflation.
Ahead of a Monday afternoon meeting with members of his administration on efforts to lower prices for working families, the president briefly addressed members of the White House press corps.
As the reporters were ushered out of the room following the president’s public comments, a number of them lobbed a series of questions at Biden—including Doocy, who has carved out a niche for himself as a media foil of the administration.
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The Fox News correspondent shouted out, asking if the president was worried that rising inflation had become a political liability. Biden, sarcastically muttering loudly enough to be caught by microphones, replied: “No, it's a great asset—more inflation.”
He then added: “What a stupid son of a bitch!”
Moments later, Doocy found himself talking about the president insulting him on one of cable television’s most-watched programs—Fox News’ late-afternoon opinion show The Five.
While co-host Dana Perino said the president should give Doocy an exclusive interview as a way to apologize and Jeanine Pirro claimed this was proof that Biden “can’t control his anger,” Doocy seemed to take the moment in stride.
“I think the president’s right,” co-host Jesse Watters quipped. “You are a stupid S.O.B.”
“Nobody has fact-checked him yet and said it's not true,” Doocy replied.
The president called the Fox reporter a “stupid son of a bitch” days after he was heard grumbling under his breath that Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich had asked him a “stupid question” about Ukraine and Russia.
Later on Monday evening, Doocy appeared on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s primetime show to reveal that the president had called him personally to apologize for the harsh words.
“Within about an hour of that exchange, he called my cellphone and he said, ‘It’s nothing personal, pal,’” Doocy told Hannity. “And we went back and forth and we were talking about just kind of moving forward, and I made sure to tell him that I’m always going to try to ask something different than what everybody else is asking. And he said, ‘You’ve got to.’ And that’s a quote from the president. So I’ll keep doing it.”
The Fox News reporter added that he “appreciated” that Biden had “cleared the air” despite “all this stuff going on” in the world, calling it a “nice call.”
