White House press secretary Jen Psaki clashes with reporter

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has clashed with another reporter, mocking a Fox News journalist over a question about green energy jobs.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki mocked a reporter who asked when workers on the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline would get “green jobs” promised by President Joe Biden.

It’s expected that up to 11,000 jobs will be lost following Mr Biden’s day-one decision to immediately shut down construction of the pipeline that was supposed to carry oil from Canada to Texas — leaving South Dakotans reeling and 1000 people immediately out of work.

“Where is it that they can go for their green job?” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Ms Psaki at her Monday afternoon press briefing, referring to Mr Biden’s promise to create good-paying union jobs in the green energy sector as his administration attempts to end the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

“That is something the administration has promised and there is now a gap so I’m just curious when that happens, when those people can count on?” he added.

“Well, I’d certainly welcome you to present your data of all the thousands and thousands of people who won’t be getting a green job,” Ms Psaki responded.

“Maybe next time you’re here you can present that.”

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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki mocked a reporter who asked when workers on the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline would get ‘green jobs’. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

“But you said they will be getting green jobs. I’m just asking when that happens?” Doocy questioned, noting a report by the Labourer’s International Union of North America that found 1000 union jobs on the Keystone project would “immediately vanish”.

Another 10,000 construction jobs expected to be created by the project have also been nixed by Mr Biden’s decision.

A prominent union leader and Biden ally, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, lashed the decision in an Axios on HBO interview on Sunday, saying Mr Biden should have also announced where he would replace those lost jobs.

“I wish he hadn’t done that on the first day, because the Labourers International was right. It did and will cost us jobs in the process,” Mr Trumka told Jonathan Swan.

“I wish he had paired that more carefully with the thing that he did second by saying, ‘Here’s where we’re creating jobs,’” he went on, saying he believed Mr Biden knows his announcement was “a mistake”.

Mr Trumka, a former coal miner, also signalled his scepticism at Mr Biden’s plan to transition coal, gas and oil workers to clean energy jobs, saying he was subject to a similar failed policy.

“You know, when they laid off at the mines back in Pennsylvania, they told us they were going to train us to be computer programmers,” he said.

“And I said, ‘Where are the computer programmer jobs at?’ ‘Uh, they’re in, uh, Oklahoma and they’re in Vegas and they’re here.’ And I said, ‘So, in other words, what we’re going to be is unemployed miners and unemployed computer programmers as well’.”

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Joe Biden made the decision on day one of his presidency to immediately shut down construction of the pipeline. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

Intended to carry oil from Canada to Texas, up to 11,000 jobs will be lost following Mr Biden’s decision. Picture: Tom Pennington/Getty Images North America/AFP

But Ms Psaki swatted away the criticism and made a vague promise that Mr Biden would put a jobs plan forward in the coming weeks.

“He has every plan to share more details on that plan in the weeks ahead,” she said when asked how the President would support workers left jobless by the decision.

Mr Biden’s climate tsar John Kerry was also condemned by Republicans last month as “out of touch” when he suggested that energy and coal workers impacted by climate change efforts could “go to work to make the solar panels”.

Last month, the Biden administration unveiled its $US2 trillion Green New Deal-fuelled environmental plan, which includes eliminating coal, oil and natural gas as electricity sources by 2035.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and is reproduced here with permission