In an unimaginable hate crime, Karine Jean-Pierre’s handlers have apparently pulled some strings behind the scenes to get African reporter Simon Ateba, her arch-nemesis, pulled from the press pool.
Via Fox News:
Today News Africa reporter Simon Ateba’s longtime feud with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is now coming to a head.
Ateba claims he is being removed from the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) as retribution for pressing Jean-Pierre on tough issues and asking hard questions.
They refuse to renew my membership,” Ateba told Tucker Carlson on Thursday. “They are trying to help the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, because when you do the right thing, when you ask the right question, they try to silence you and try to censor you.
Simon Ateba is an American hero. He is the only reporter who asks KJP tough questions – which is why she never calls on him and ignores his constant pleas to just get a single question answered.
He makes Fox News’ Peter Doocy – the only other guy in the room who takes a remotely antagonistic approach to questioning – look milquetoast.
Most satisfyingly, Ateba crashed KJP’s coronation as she replaced Jen Psaki when she departed to join MSNBC state media.
It was supposed to be a bittersweet, magical moment – the first immigrant lesbian Person of Color™ replaces the beloved ginger slay queen in a solemn changing of the guard – but Ateba ruined it with unauthorized questions.
Ateba has often flustered KJP with off-the-cuff questions as she struggles to read her canned answers from her script. Other “reporters” in the room – who, not coincidentally, still enjoy their press pass privileges – have the decency to only ask pre-approved questions and to coddle the diverse superstar as she sounds out the answers, Hooked-on-Phonics style.
This is obviously bad optics. The White House hoped that, by introducing KJP as Psaki’s replacement, they were ushering in an era of non-stop praise and admiration of their courageous Person of Color™. Instead, they got the tragedy of black-on-black crime – a minority, immigrant reporter brutally shut down again and again by their own minority immigrant right in front of the cameras.
Sad!
African reporter Simon Ateb fires back at White House press secretary Jean-Pierre of 'Discrimination' Ateba, a Cameroonian journalist who runs the online news outlet Today News Africa, has repeatedly clashed with former White House press secretary Jen Psaki and Jean-Pierre in the pic.twitter.com/082xS75tSN
— いぶき (@ibuki53010508) December 11, 2022
Ateba posted the letter he reportedly received from the Correspondents’ Association informing him of the bad news, which read, in part: “The committee noted repeated instances where your behavior violated the expectations for membership outlined in our bylaws, which have been detailed to you previously.”
Today is a dark day for freedom of the press in the United States of America. The forces of evil who felt belittled have removed me from the White House Correspondents Association. The removal had the approval of one journalist called @tamarakeithNPR who https://t.co/ku6YlLJ9km… https://t.co/6sCa9iKgeT pic.twitter.com/2grSfnbwh2
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) March 4, 2023
Apparently, Ateba suffered from the misapprehension that he had come to a free country with a free press.
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