White House: Late congresswoman ‘top of mind’ in Biden flub

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden sought out deceased Rep. Jackie Walorski on Wednesday during remarks at a hunger conference, saying “Where’s Jackie?” The White House press secretary later said the congresswoman had been “top of mind” for the president at the time.

Karine Jean-Pierre didn't acknowledge that Biden had misspoken at the White House conference about hunger, nutrition, and health. He looked around for Walorski, an Indiana congresswoman who was killed in an August car accident.

Biden in his remarks. Biden, in his remarks, praised bipartisan legislators who worked to address childhood hunger, including Rep. Jim McGovern and Sen. Mike Braun, Sen. Cory Booker, and Walorski, who was considered a leader in the area before her death.

“Where’s Jackie?” Biden said, suggesting he expected her to be there.

Jean-Pierre faced repeated questioning during Wednesday’s White House press briefing about Biden’s flub, saying more than a dozen times that Walorski was “top of mind” for the president, who plans to meet with the congresswoman’s family at an event Friday when he signs a bill renaming a Veterans Affairs clinic in Indiana after her. She declined to say Biden had erred, nor did she issue an apology to the late lawmaker’s family.

“My answer is certainly not going to change,” she told reporters. “All of you may have views on how I’m answering it, but I’m answering the question to the way that he saw it and to the way that we see it.”

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