Peter Doocy Paints John Kirby Into a Corner Over Biden's Embarrassing 'Don't' Doctrine

Doug P. | 3:41 PM on April 15, 2024

By all measures, President Biden's "Don't" doctrine for foreign policy has been another colossal failure, along with every other strategy this administration undertakes.

Last week, after Biden was asked if he had a message after reports that Iran might stage some sort of attack against Israel, the president had that same one-word message:

"What is your message to Iran in this moment?"

BIDEN (confused): "Don't" pic.twitter.com/7bnlSbUIJt
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 12, 2024

You know what happened next: Iran launched missiles and drones by the hundreds at Israel, and most were eventually intercepted.

DOOCY TIME: “John, has President Biden considered maybe beefing up the public Iran posture to be more than just one word?”

WH’s John Kirby: “You — you’re referring to, ‘don't’?”

Doocy: “Yeah.”

Kirby: “And so, let's —”

Doocy: “Because he said —”

Kirby: “— talk about —”… pic.twitter.com/KufejLZFnX
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 15, 2024

Here's the full exchange via @CurtisHouck:

DOOCY TIME: “John, has President Biden considered maybe beefing up the public Iran posture to be more than just one word?”
WH’s John Kirby: “You — you’re referring to, ‘don't’?”
Doocy: “Yeah.”
Kirby: “And so, let's —”
Doocy: “Because he said —”
Kirby: “— talk about —”
Doocy: “— ‘don’t’ and they did it anyway.”
Kirby: “— and let's talk about —”
Doocy: “So, now what?”
Kirby: — what we did. Peter. Let's talk about ‘don’t’ and did. Let's talk about Saturday night. He made it clear that he didn't want to see escalation in the region.”
Doocy: “And yet, there was.”
Kirby: “Eh, let me finish. He added military resources to the region right after October 7 and then, when we had an inkling that this kind of thing was coming, he added even more military resources to the region, more destroyers that were capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, fighters — fighter squadron that was able to shoot down drones and that's what we did. So, you can talk about the ‘don't’ word all you want, but let's talk about what did happen. And what did happen was Iran utterly failed. And if I'm sitting in Tehran right now, I'm betting that President Biden takes it pretty seriously. When he says, ‘don't’ escalate, he’s going to act to make sure that you can, and they didn't. Yes, they fired an unprecedented amount of munitions, but how much of a success that they have, Peter? None. Zero. Very little infrastructure. It was an embarrassing failure for the Supreme Leader for the IRGC.”