- President Joe Biden appeared to call a reporter a "stupid son of a bitch" on Monday.
- Biden's comment came after Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked a question about inflation.
- "Do you think inflation is a political liability ahead of the midterms?" Doocy asked.
President Joe Biden on Monday appeared to call Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy reporter a "stupid son of a bitch" after Doocy asked Biden whether rising inflation poses a political risk to Democrats.
"Do you think inflation is a political liability ahead of the midterms?" Doocy called out to Biden as reporters exited a meeting of the White House Competitiveness Council.
Biden appeared to mock the question, replying sarcastically: "It's a great asset — more inflation."
He added, "What a stupid son of a bitch."
—The Recount (@therecount) January 24, 2022
Neither a White House spokesperson nor a spokeperson for Fox News immediately responded to Insider's request for comment. Following the exchange, Doocy went on TV and expressed surprise at the exchange.
"I couldn't even hear him because people were shouting at us to get out, but somebody came up to me in the briefing room a few minutes later and said. 'Did you hear what the president said?' And I said, 'No, what?' And they said, 'He called you a stupid SOB.' And I said, 'Did he say SOB?' And the person said, no," he recounted.
Inflation has hit a 40-year high, pushing prices up across the board for goods like groceries and gas — and erasing many of the wage gains that workers experienced in the past year. Rising inflation is among the reasons that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has come out against Biden's $2 trillion social and climate spending bill, dealing a blow to the party's efforts to enact centerpiece of Biden's agenda.
Democrats are increasingly anxious that worsening inflation will cause voters to punish them at the ballot box and prompt them to lose control of at least one chamber of Congress in November.
And Doocy, representing the politically conservative Fox News, has frequently sparred with the White House during his tenure as a reporter. During a press conference last week, the president called on Doocy and said, sarcastically: "You always ask me the nicest questions.""None of them make a lot of sense to me, but fire away, come on," Biden said.
That sparring frequently takes place in the Brady Briefing Room, where Doocy asks questions of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
"It never feels like I'm getting smacked down or vice versa," Doocy told The New York Times in a profile of Psaki published in September. "I understand why it looks like that, some of the ways that stuff gets clipped, but it doesn't feel like that in the room."
—Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 24, 2022
Psaki has also characterized her interactions with Doocy as "entirely professional" and has said that there's an element of performance in Doocy's briefing room questions, given they're televised.
"My engagement with him, people don't always see this, but outside the briefing room, it is entirely professional and entirely, hopefully, responsive," Psaki told Mediaite in August. "There's a performative component from the TV side of the briefing room."
In a particularly heated July exchange, Psaki called a question from Doocy about the administration's efforts to crack down on vaccine misinformation "loaded and inaccurate," and Psaki called Doocy "irresponsible" in August for claiming that American citizens were "stranded" in Afghanistan amid the American withdrawal.