Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Gaggle Aboard Air Force One 8/07/23 Transcript

Okay, a couple things at the top. Good afternoon everyone. Next week marks the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act. And today, we’re headed out west where the president will hold events in Arizona and New Mexico to highlight how his administration’s historic investments in climate conservation and clean energy are delivering good paying union jobs to the American people while propelling our economy forward. Over the last few weeks and even today, we have seen how extreme weather events impact the way we live day to day. In D.C., and throughout the East Coast, millions of Americans are on alert. We encourage everyone to stay vigilant, listen to the instructions of first responders, and stay up to date with the latest alerts and guidance.

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And look, President Biden understands how critical this moment is. That is why he has already taken more actions than any prior president to address the climate crisis we face as a country and as a world. He secured the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which are the largest investments in climate, clean energy, and environmental justice in our history. The president economic agenda has already led to over $100 billion in private sector investments, in domestic clean energy manufacturing, and one of the president’s watch and on the president’s watch, EV sales have tripled and domestic solar capacity is on track to increase five times by next year.

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That is Biden dynamics at work. The president has also demonstrated his leadership by rejoining the Paris Agreement on day one and sparking a clean energy manufacturing and jobs boom at home while accelerating the global clean energy race abroad. President Biden continues to make combating the climate crisis a core tenet of his presidency. With that, I have Ali Zaidi, as you can see to my right, assistant to the president and National Climate Advisor is here to share more about the president’s climate agenda and the trip that we’re heading to.

Great. As Karine said, the president has been focused on mounting an all of government response to the climate crisis. We see the impacts in our communities every single day, and the West in particular has been feeling the brunt of this with heat waves, blanketing communities, the sky is turning orange. But embedded in this crisis is also an opportunity for us to bring the country together, to advance our conservation agenda, and to spark a manufacturing renaissance here in the country. President’s trip will demonstrate how he’s doing that.

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Tomorrow, he will be announcing his fifth new national monument. It’s nearly one million acres. And folks know about the 300 million year old cliffs that line the Grand Canyon. What’s less known is the 300 cultural sites that make up this area. They tell a rich and important history. And it’s the reason why 12 tribes stepped up to request that this monument be declared. The President is going to take action to do just that. The literal name of the monument means where are the indigenous people roam, our ancestral footprints. And in addition to telling this vibrant story, and it’s important one for us to be leaning into here as a country, and the president will do that with his pen, this is also an incredibly important ecosystem in terms of climate resilience.

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You think about the Colorado River Basin, it provides 40 million people worth of water. It supports five and a half million acres of agricultural lands. And just think about this. The 23-year period from 2000 to 2022 represents the driest period of time recorded in 1300 years in the West. And so these steps are so incredibly important, and they are against the backdrop of the president’s bold conservation agenda, an agenda he laid out in his day one executive order, announcing a goal for 30% by 2030, the America, the beautiful goal.

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And underneath that, he has now taken action on tens of millions of acres to conserve those lands. In New Mexico, the next day, we’ll get a chance to see how the president’s historic leadership, through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and hundreds of actions coordinated through his entire government are sparking a manufacturing renaissance across the United States. Now, just picture in your minds that two weeks ago, in Belen, New Mexico at 11:00 AM on Main Street, a bunch of folks showed up as our COSA held a job fair for the 250 folks they’re going to hire to work at this factory that’s going to manufacture wind towers.

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And that’s everyone from welders, to maintenance and quality technicians. This is a tremendous opportunity for the country. We’re seeing it all across the United States this boom in US clean energy manufacturing. 100 factories [inaudible 00:05:30] was signed. And this happens in a context, right? So folks know the Inflation Reduction Act. What they don’t realize is all of the other actions that the president [inaudible 00:05:44] energy transmission lines that are generating the demand for this. So the SunZia line, which is going to run from New Mexico into Arizona, has four and a half gigawatts of capacity, going to pull wind off of those planes and deliver it to load centers.

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Just a couple of months ago, I was with the vice president as we did a groundbreaking in Arizona for the Ten West line. That was three gigawatts of capacity. Now, folks know the 1.21 gigawatts it takes to move the DeLorean, but in real life, a gigawatt is about 750,000 to a million homes worth of electricity. So just think about these two power lines that this administration’s accelerated are going to deliver millions of homes worth of electrons, and that’s creating demand for factories like this. So this is massive, massive progress.

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And as Karine said, it builds on incredible momentum, whether it’s in electric vehicles or in solar or offshore wind. The president, we went recently to Philadelphia where an offshore wind that was unimaginable just a few years ago, where a previous administration had done everything it could to slow momentum down, where we’ve got folks as congressional Republicans trying to pull away the incentives, put roadblocks in its way, well, under this administration, we’ve got four projects now that are green lit for construction. Remember that gigawatt? Gigawatts worth of capacity, millions of homes along the East coast that will be powered.

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And by the way, it’s not just opportunity for the coastlines, it’s opportunity and 46 states have supply chain for offshore wind. So we’re just seeing, I think, a president unlike any that we’ve seen before, who sees the tremendous challenge on the horizon in the form of climate change, the need for urgent and bold action and he’s delivering, and the opportunity embedded in it to lift up our communities, our economy, our workers, and bring us together around our shared history that’s, by the way, hundreds of millions of years old. And we’ll see that at the Grand Canyon tomorrow.

I have two questions on climate stuff. On the monument, will any uranium mining be allowed inside the new monument area whether they be grandfathered in?

The mining is off limits for future development in that area. What the monument does recognize is existing rights that have been established previously. And it’s focused on preserving the historical resources in this 917, 000 acres, making sure that we’re doing everything that we can on a coordinated basis in a co-management approach to lift up those historical resources, the ecosystem resources. But this is going to be, I think, a limit on future development in the space while being respectful of existing rights.

The second issue is, you mentioned some of these transmission lines. Very big projects. One big issue is permitting. What is the administration’s next step on permitting, given some steps are taken as part of the budget deal, but much more the administration wants? What’s the next move on that?

That’s a great question. So I talked about the SunZia line, four and a half gigawatts, the Ten West line, three gigawatts. Across the west, we’ve seen TransWest get done, Gateway South, Gateway West, all gigawatt scale lines. In the Northeast, the Champlain Hudson line get done under this administration. And we’ve learned a lot about how to do this the right way. That’s why this week, we are proposing a rule through the Department of Energy that will accelerate the permitting of lines on public lands down to two years. That’s a massive deal.

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You look at the SunZia project, which has taken over a decade to get done. We’ve learned a lot in the process. We know how to do this in an environmentally responsible way, in a way that brings in community voices and gets the job done. And that’s what this administration is focused on doing.

Ali, a quick question on the Washington Post poll today, which you probably saw, which said that most disapprove of President Biden’s handling of climate change. I mean, the gist of the story is that most people don’t really know what’s in the IRA. And I’m hoping you can speak to what the White House is doing to tackle that perception and, of course, further the fight against climate change.

Well, look, the United States has become the essential place to drive climate action forward. Take for example… And you’re talking about what’s the perception of the United States. So let’s talk about that. The perception of the United States is, folks have invested over $210 billion in the US electric vehicle industry. The US is now the single number one nation destination for private investment in EVs. One out of every 12 vehicle that was sold was electric. That’s three X what it was

… that’s when the president took office. There’s twice as many charging stations as people drive down the road. And under this president, we’re going to get to 500,000, which means they will become increasingly ubiquitous. And the jobs we’re talking about, again, give you the example of someone on Main Street just two weeks ago showing up. This is transforming people’s lives in a fundamental way. And I think another question I think a lot of folks had was, well, can we not only do this but can we make it here in America?

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Karine talked about the massive solar deployment that’s taken place. But think about this. We’ve expanded solar manufacturing capacity by a factor of eight, which means 8 million homes worth of solar panels will be produced here by the end of the president’s first term. Credit Suisse, again, what is the perception, now says that by 2030 we will be able to supply 90% of US demand for solar. So I think whether it’s offshore or wind, where you’ve got supply chain in 46 states, whether it’s the 100 factories that are being built, whether it’s folks who can now access a $7,500 tax credit for new vehicles, 4,000 for used vehicles, whether it’s people who … you spend half your money in heating and cooling costs for a home energy bill, that’s now the subject of a rebate. You can get support swapping out your HVAC system.

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So I think we’re making a massive difference in terms of the cost that people absorb on utility bills, cutting those costs. We’re making a massive difference in lifting people up into clean energy job, and the president’s translated the greatest risk we face into our greatest economic opportunity.

Where is the disconnect? You’re clearly doing a lot of different things to further the president’s climate agenda and his goals. Where do you think is the disconnect? Why are people still saying they don’t really know what he’s doing?

I think the signal we’re getting is that the American people, and frankly, people all around the world want everybody to go as fast as they can faster and faster, picking up the pace of climate action. That’s what the president’s been focused on. And it’s looking for opportunity in places we haven’t seen it before. So I’ll give you another example. In the agriculture sector, we’ve signed up 60,000 farms, 25 million acres to take on climate-smart agriculture practices. So I think what we’re hearing loud and clear from every sector of the economy, from folks all across the country is let’s go faster. And that’s what the president’s focused on every day taking action, like the ones he’s going to take this week. And we’ve got to hold firm against folks who want to take us the wrong direction.

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And I think whether it’s ways and means markup or budget discussions, we’re hearing proposals to pull away tax credits that are helping stamp Made in America on panels and turbines made here in the US. We got to fight against proposals that take us back, and we’ve got to find a way to keep pushing on the accelerator, which is what the president’s doing. Just take this week as an example, right? Moving forward on transmission, moving forward on conservation, helping open up more factories across the country.

How much of this trip is about advertising that? I mean, polls show that people don’t know. And the same with the economy.

Can I just [inaudible 00:14:33] for a second.

So look, we know that polls don’t tell the entire story. That’s just a fact. It doesn’t. It’s a snapshot of time. We know that, you all have written about that. And I think if you look back to the midterms, the midterm elections, we are in a stronger place. This president is in a stronger place than he was during the midterms. It’s just true. So it’ll continue. It’ll continue to build. And as we’re implementing, you think about the CHIPS and Science Act as we’re implementing Inflation Reduction Act, what we’re just talking about, what the president’s going to do, we’ll see, I think Americans start to feel and see what it is that we have been able to do in Washington DC, some in bipartisan way, clearly with the president’s leadership to get those things done.

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And that’s why we’re out. That’s why the president going out west. When you see these extreme weather, people are truly, truly feeling it. And if they see the president going out there making these announcements, showing and talking to directly, he’s our best messenger to talk about what he’s doing on climate change, I think it’s going to matter. But again, snapshot in time, the polls don’t tell the entire story. And so we’re going to continue to talk about it.

And I’d add to that more and more as … and I remember being on the campaign folks were saying, Hey, this is really great in concept, but what will it look like in reality? Well, in reality, now we’ve got 400 school districts that have electric buses funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We’ve got the postal service which shows up in every neighborhood in America going fully electric. We’ve got power plants in Indiana that were shuttered that are now turning into battery storage power plants in Wyoming, shuttered that are now turning into nuclear, power plants in New Mexico, shuttered turning into clean hydrogen power plants, power plants on the East Coast now turning back on to be the place where we plug in offshore wind.

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You’ve got Dalton, Georgia where they used to make sofas that went away. Now they make solar; Weirton, West Virginia where they used to make steel; that went away, now they’re making these batteries. So that visible difference I think is showing up. It’s transforming. And I do think part of the value of lifting up the progress the United States is making is there’s a virtuous cycle. We’re now the number one destination for electric vehicle investment. The president has made the US the magnet for private capital investment. Lifting up that story helps attract more investment into our communities and into our workers.

I just got to say this one thing because we’re talking about the economy, we’re talking about what the president is doing. You think about the Inflation Reduction Act, you think about the American Rescue Plan, you think about some CHIPS and Science Act, and you have Republicans in their own district and states who did not vote for any of this and are taking credit for it. So clearly, what the president has done is good, right? Even when you have Republicans saying, taking credit for something they had nothing to do with. And so look, we’re going to continue to do our jobs and continue to talk about it, continue to talk to all of you about it. And the hope is that we’ll get our message out. Go ahead. Sorry, I interrupted you.

On electric vehicles, look at the sales numbers. They’re increasing but not that much. Why does this administration think rhetoric and action is going to overcome consumer choice? Because consumers aren’t choosing to buy them right now.

This is all about consumer choice. The number of electric models that are available today are double the number of electric models that were available when the president took office. And by the end of the next year, that number will have doubled again. So one, this is about making sure folks have access. Number two-

But if you’re not buying it, does it matter how many models there are?

The sales of electric vehicles? And you can look at the data-

[inaudible 00:18:25] a little bit. Not spectacularly.

Three in two and a half years is actually pretty dramatic. One out of every 12 vehicles sold being electric. And here, think about this. You’ve got the largest automakers in the world who’ve made a bet in the United States, 15 gigafactories worth of battery plants that have been built in the United States, enough batteries to power 10 to 13 million electric vehicles by 2030. Look, you don’t have to take my word on consumer appetite. Take the word of the auto sector and follow the money. They’re investing where consumers are going. You look at the JD Power, we’ll send you the JD Power data, folks are Googling electric vehicles. They’re going to their dealerships asking about them. The interest is at record highs. Automakers have frankly struggled to meet the demand. They’re ramping that up on an aggressive clip. And we’re seeing automakers from all around the world flock to a red-hot market just like solar and wind and everything else where they want to manufacture here and they want to meet consumer demand. And I think you see it in the numbers. JD Power is a great example of the latest sales data.

I had a question. Despite everything the administration has done, the US is not yet on track to hit the Paris target. What is the missing piece? What else the administration have that can do it to push that all the way?

That’s a great question. Look, when the president set his nationally determined contribution, the goal of 50 to 52% his first Earth Day in office, I think a lot of folks were very, very skeptical. I remember because I took your questions, and in the time since through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and through the Inflation Reduction Act, he’s driven a lot of the trajectory through an investment-based approach. And when you look at that, there are a number of blue chip modelers in the space, they’ll give you estimates high 30%, low 40% relative to that 2030 goal. And let’s remind ourselves, when we came into office that 2030 target was looking like something like in the mid-twenties at best is where the US was going to be. So the Inflation Reduction ACT infrastructure law gets us from those sort of low to mid-twenties to high thirties, low forties.

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Then you pile on top of that, all of the impressive accomplishments, this president … hydrofluorocarbons, super-polluting greenhouse gas. He made sure we implemented the AIM Act from day one of this administration, and then he got through the United States Senate on a bipartisan basis, ratification of the Kigali amendment that’s on its own, like 75… A hundred million metric tons. For folks who care about the numbers, 75 million metric tons is about a percentage point. So HFCs, another percentage point. Then you look at the methane rules. We had a White House Methane Summit just a couple of weeks ago. We’ve proposed now regulatory activity from Department of Transportation on those pipelines that go into cities from the Department of Interior for oil and gas developed on public lands and through the EPA for broader coverage of operations, including into the midstream. That rule alone is expected to deliver over a hundred million metric tons

… tons of, or set of rules is expected to deliver over a hundred million. So that’s another percentage point, maybe a percentage point-and-a-half. We’ve proposed rules in the auto sector, in the power sector, and the Administration’s also driving, I think, tremendous action through the purchasing power of the Federal Government. So the industrial sector, which has been traditionally looked at as, “Gee, that’s impossible to decarbonize, steel, cement, aluminum, we’ll never get those tons.”

(22:32)
Well, in this Administration, we’re chasing after clean steel, clean aluminum, clean cement. The General Services Administration, which maybe folks haven’t heard of, GSA, they buy stuff for us, they’ve set standards for asphalt, for flat glass, for steel, for aluminum.

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So as we’re going through the infrastructure decade, which by the way, this is the biggest moment for infrastructure ever, we’re buying stuff that’s clean.

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And we’re not the only ones that are doing it. Thanks to the President’s leadership, we’ve catalyzed action at the state level, 12 states have stepped up with Buy Clean Programs of their own. New Jersey has created a production tax credit for clean cement. So that’s how you start to stack up.

(23:16)
We keep the math, we do the accounting, we stay in touch with private sector, public sector, and we have a line of sight to the 50 to 52%, we’re on a trajectory to meet those goals because of his leadership.

To meet the 2030 goal?

Absolutely.

President often says, “Never a good bet to bet against America,” I don’t think it’s a pretty good bet to bet against Joe Biden either, right? He made a goal, he set that goal, it was super ambitious. He’s delivered legislative wins in the form of investment. He’s delivered legislative wins in the form of bipartisan action on the Kigali Amendment. He’s delivered legislative wins in the form of policy empowerment within our agencies and he’s taken bold executive action in every single agency of the Federal Government. And that’s driving a cascading effect of leaders at the state and local level also stepping up.

All right.

(24:24)
Okay.

Thank you.

Ali, thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, I just have a couple of things that I do want to share.

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This might be the longest gaggle.

(24:38)
But it’s okay. Actually, Jake, when Jake does it, it’s pretty long.

(24:42)
All right, so in addition to the climate and energy focus of our travel to Arizona and New Mexico on Thursday, as you all know, we’re going to be headed to Utah, where President Biden is going to mark the one-year anniversary of the PACT Act in Salt Lake City. He will meet with veterans and deliver remarks about the historic progress we’ve made in expanding veterans benefits for those who have bravely served our country.

(25:06)
And I also wanted to say a couple of words about the tragic helicopter crash that I’m sure you all saw out West. So the President has been briefed on this tragic incident. He and the First Lady are praying for the families of the firefighters who lost their lives while bravely battling this fire.

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And lastly, as many of you know, yesterday was the 58th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. As President Biden said in Selma this past March, and I quote, “The right to vote and to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it, anything is possible. Without it, nothing is possible.”

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This fundamental right remains under assault in the state legislatures across the country. And even the Voting Rights Act itself has been gutted by a conservative Supreme Court. The President remains committed to getting the votes in Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Freedom to Vote Act, and continuing to fight to protect this fundamental right.

(26:08)
With that, anybody?

It’s been a while and you just brought up voting rights. What does POTUS make of the indictment against former President Trump, given the questions of how his conduct allegedly infringed on people’s voting rights?

So look, as we’ve been very clear and we continue to [inaudible 00:26:26] here, we’re just not going to comment on the indictment. It is, as you know, being run and led by a Department of Justice, which is an independent department, as it comes to dealing with these types of cases. We respect the rule of law. I just laid out what the President believes and how he sees voting rights moving forward and protecting American’s rights to vote as we see across the state legislature. As it relates directly to this case, I’m just not going to comment on it.

And one more thing, Ukraine says it’s foiled an assassination attack on President Zelenskyy, what is the White House’s understanding of the situation and the severity of the plot?

So look, I saw the report, I haven’t had a chance to talk to our National Security Council on this, but clearly seen the reports, just not going to comment. From here, I’ll let the Ukrainian Government speak to it directly.

Quick question on the Fitch downgrade.

On the, which?

On the Fitch downgrade. We saw your statement after their decision. And they were obviously pointing to political [inaudible 00:27:35]. And we want to know, do you disagree with that assessment? And do you think that decision was perhaps politically motivated?

So look, certainly not going to talk [inaudible 00:27:47] any political motivations. We strongly disagree, right, with Fitch Ratings’ decision, that’s what I put in my statement. That’s what you saw from the statement.

(27:57)
Look, over the past few years, the United States has undergone a historically fast economic recovery from a deep recession, as we talk about Bidenomics and how it’s working. And that’s what we believe, right? And we believe also the Fitch Ratings is based on outdated data and it is inconsistent with the progress that we see.

(28:18)
I think what you were asking me about is how they talked about January 6th being a factor in how they move forward with their decision. So Fitch, as an area of concern with the January 6th, when discussing governance as part of the downgrade. So look, the Administration has pushed for and executed on the passage of bipartisan legislation, addressed the debt limit, invest infrastructure, and make other investments in America’s competitiveness. And so, I’m just going to leave that there, but I’m certainly not going to talk to the politics of it.

(28:53)
We strongly, strongly disagree. You’ve heard from our economic folks, all of last week, speaking and laying out why we disagree. I just laid out why we disagree with it. And I think we believe the work that the President has done the last two years on getting the economy back on its feet, and as you know, we’ve called it Bidenomics because we have seen unemployment rate, low, under 4%, which has been consistent for more than a year, right? We’ve seen job growth, when we think about more than 13 million jobs, when we think about wages being strong, when you think about could consumer confidence, all of that leads to Bidenomics and we’re going to continue to do that work.

What have been specifically the conversations that you’ve had with Fitch since they downgraded? And do you have any indications that other ratings agencies are perhaps likely to follow? In this case, the Treasury Secretary was already in conversations with them.

As you just stated, Treasury regularly meets with all major credit ratings agencies each year as part of their process to answer questions and exchange perspective, all based on public information. So we engaged with Fitch, and shared our strong disagreement with their methodology, and how they came about their conclusions. But the flawed decision was ultimately Fitch’s alone to make. And so Treasury, as I said, has had that conversation with them. I just don’t have anything else else.

[inaudible 00:30:31] anyone else is following?

Look, I’m not going to get into hypotheticals on what other major credit rating agencies are going to do, but as I mentioned, the Treasury Department is in regular communication with them. I just don’t have anything beyond that.

I have one on Ohio, but I did want to follow on that. You said Fitch has used outdated data. And what folks have pointed to is that they’ve cited January 6th, then we’ve gone farther from January 6th and the Trump presidency. But an alternate explanation could be twofold. One, that they foresee Donald Trump as having a higher chance of reclaiming the Presidency in a couple of years. Or two, that regardless of that, they still see government spending and government debt having increased significantly under President Biden’s tenure. I was wondering if you can talk about whether the White House or the Administration needs to do and change anything in their conversations with Wall Street? And if those specific concerns have been relayed to the Administration?

So a couple of things. When I say outdated data, what I mean by that is, as I just laid out, what we see Bidenomics has done, unemployment rate, jobs growth, wage being stronger, consumer confidence, those are real data, right, when you think about inflation, core inflation easing, right, and we’ve seen that consistently for several months. And so those matter, right, those are incredibly important. That data is important. And so that’s part of what we see, we believe as being outdated data.

(31:59)
Look, as it relates to the debt limit, that’s why you see the bipartisan infrastructure legislation dealing to helping put the debt down. When you think about the Inflation Reduction Act, like every piece of legislation this President, the historical pieces of legislation the President has passed, helps bring down the deficit, right? And when we talk about the President being able to lower the deficit-

Not the first one, the first one added to the deficit raising the [inaudible 00:32:29].

Okay. But you hear her talk about the more than $1 trillion over the first two years, more than any other President in their first four years, right? That’s something that the President takes very, very seriously. And when he puts out those policies, he does it in a fiscally responsible way. And so that’s how he’s going to move forward in doing that.

(32:47)
Look, you mentioned January 6th. That’s something for, clearly, the agencies to speak about that more broadly, more specifically. But what we’re talking about is the real data that you all look at, CPI.

… CPI. When you look at the GDP, we saw the GDP that just recently came out that was better than we had all anticipated. And so all those pieces of information is critical and important as well.

On Ohio, voters are ahead of the polls tomorrow, there’s sort of a proxy vote for possible changes to the constitution on abortion rights coming down the road. I was wondering if the White House has been engaged at all there? If you have a message to voters?

So first, just kind of putting into a little bit of a historical context, when it comes to Republican elected officials in Ohio, they’ve been chipping away at some time at women’s rights and access to reproductive healthcare. That is something that we have seen over the years and, as we all know, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade, their efforts to undermine reproductive rights have only escalated. We’ve seen stories after stories about women telling their stories about what they’ve been through over this past more than a year now after what we saw the Supreme Court do so ahead of a potential vote on reproductive freedom in November, which would give Ohioans a say over abortion access in their state. Ohio Republican elected officials have called a special election to change the state’s constitutional amendment process and weaken voters’ voices. That’s where we are today in Ohio, but also very similarly across the country. So we, the administration, the Biden Harris administration strongly oppose attempts to take away a woman’s ability to access reproductive healthcare. And we will continue to be loud and very clear about that.

The administration has revoked 500 press hard passes under the new roles, how can this administration say it supports freedom of press when you’ve revoked a third of the press hard pass… A fifth of the… I’m sorry, a third of the press hard passes out there?

Because what you just laid out, we don’t believe to be true and what our purpose and what we’ve tried to do here. What we have tried to do is return to hard press criteria in place during prior administrations. And just so that folks who may not know what hard passes are, they are intended to provide reporters with a regular need to access campus, the means to do so efficiently to do their jobs. And we appreciate that and that’s what we want to see. So unfortunately, the absence of guidelines, hard passes have been issued to people who were not using them. And so creating an wildly system and unnecessary risk. So in fact, here’s what we have been able to see is at the time we initiated this process, roughly 40% of hard passes holders had not accessed the White House Complex in 90 days.

(35:38)
Over the last three months, what we’ve been able to do is we have processed more than 975, that’s nearly 1000 hard passes, renewals and applications, which is more than two thirds, the number of hard passes that previously existed. So it’s also important to remember that as always, media without hard passes is going to continue to have access to the White House, they can request day passes to access the White House for briefings and events going forward. So we think this demonstrates that we’d let a thoughtful and thorough process that preserves robust media access to campus for everyone who needs it, whether it would be a hard pass or a day pass. And this is something that has taken us more than a year to think through. We gave folks three months and I mean processing 970 hard passes, almost a thousand that our poor wranglers have had to manage and deal with, that’s not a small number.

Some of the people who their press passes revoked or considering filing a lawsuit against the administration arguing that by requiring a Senate pass that led the executive branch is seating its authority to the legislative branch in violation of the Constitution, do you have a response to that?

I’m not going to speak to any potential or hypothetical lawsuits, I’m just not going to speak from that.

One last question. Has the President heard anything from special counsel Robert Hur? Has he been in contact with the president that you know of as-

I’m just not going to comment on that. The president has been very, very clear when it comes to any investigations that the DOJ is leading, it is independent, it is led… We believe in the rule of law. This is something he has said during the campaign, he wants to give the Department of Justice an independence and that’s what we have done. And that’s why we have been very consistent where they’re on the Air Force One where they’re at the podium to not comment and to let the Department of Justice do their job.

Communications between the Pentagon and their Russian, Chinese counterparts haven’t been the best recently. Is the White House concerned at all with the drills going off the coast of Alaska? Any sort of safety or other concerns?

So a couple things here. So the US military forces actively monitor the Russian and Chinese Naval patrol in the Northern Pacific. These exercise remain in international waters and were not considered a threat, that has been the assessment from the Department of Defense.

Can I just quiz you on the hard pass numbers? One more question about that. I’m sorry to do that, but-

Is that what it’s called now, [inaudible 00:38:12]?

Do you have a sense of the 400 or so that were not renewed, how many of those are people who haven’t accessed campus and how many of those are people who are actively pursuing journalism in whatever form on campus?

That’s a [inaudible 00:38:25] question, I clearly don’t have that data in front of me. So we can certainly… I can check with the team and see where those numbers are for those specific questions that you just asked. But I do want to just reiterate that we did this in a thoughtful way, we gave people three months to kind of figure it out once we put out how we were going to move forward, we’re going back to ways it was done in previous administration. And so we want to make sure that the people who need it and come to the White House every day have access and it doesn’t become an unwieldy process, and so we’ll leave that there.

Karine, is President Biden planning to go to the ASEAN Summit in Indonesia.

So we don’t have anything to preview at this time or to confirm.

Okay.

Okay.

You’re tracking with the fall coming up a rough COVID season. Is there anything you can share about what the administration’s planning for… What’s predicted for the fall?

Or this surge that’s happening right now? I said, or this surge that’s happening-

[inaudible 00:39:25] stand on top of each other.

So, okay, a couple of things there. So as you all know, this administration made historic progress on our nation’s ability to manage COVID-19 so that it no longer meaningfully disrupts the way we live our lives. That is something that the president made priority number one when he stepped into the administration. So under this president leadership, the administration has taken significant steps to ensure continued access to lifesaving protections such as vaccines, treatments, and tests. And at the same time, we are working to ensure our nation is well-prepared to manage any new risk kind of to your, correction posed by COVID-19 and other viruses in the future through HHS and launch, as you all know, the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy at the White House, the office will coordinate across the federal government and implement actions related to preparedness for and respond to known and unknown biological threats or pathogens that could lead to a pandemic or to significant public health related disruptions in the US, this works includes monitoring COVID-19 trends and impacts and providing information necessary to protect the nation’s public health.

(40:36)
So we are going to continue to be vigilant here and continuing the historic progress that the president has done since he’s walked into office. All right.

[inaudible 00:40:46] he’s going to be doing any sort of public service campaign to get people to get vaccinated? Or is he past that?

Well look, we have the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy as I just mentioned at the White House, clearly that’s going to be an important place where it’s going to kind of deal with anything that’s related in COVID or a potential any… Be prepared essentially for anything that might come our way. I don’t have anything to read out or lay out on the president specifically speaking on COVID. All right guys, my voice is going, but I’ll see you guys on the ground.

Thank you.

Thanks everybody.