The White House briefing room is a somber place. After all, the Fourth Estate is there to grill the mouthpiece of the executive branch about all of the most pressing problems in America and the world.

But lately, the place is just frivolous and giggly.

Right now, we’ve got a major conflict that threatens to expand into a world war, and at home, we’ve got out-of-control inflation, soaring crime, rampant drug abuse and overdose deaths, a mental health epidemic, illegal immigrants storming across the border, mounting poverty and homelessness, and more.

Yet the White House press corps that attends the daily briefing — which, by one account, skews Democrat by a 12:1 margin — is endlessly amused by it all.

One reporter on Monday asked John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, about the “gang of eight,” a group of lawmakers that must be notified of all intelligence activities undertaken by the president, and their responses to the case against former President Donald Trump.

“There are two members of the Gang of Eight so far, that I’ve seen — one of them who says what happened with the documents at Mar-a-Lago is really not a big deal; another one says it’s OK because there’s a lock on the bathroom door. So is there a reason, perhaps, to have a discussion with some folks on the Hill about stuff?” the reporter asked, drawing laughter from colleagues.

“Is there a reason to have a conversation with people on the Hill about stuff?” Kirby said to more laughter.

Ah, the hilarity. One president is abusing all his powers with the FBI and other agencies to investigate and prosecute his predecessor. Ha ha ha.

Kirby hemmed and hawed and said nothing. So another reporter gave it a go.

REPORTER: I should like first to take one more stab at getting you to say something substantive about the Trump case.

MR. KIRBY: Go for it. (Laughter.)

REPORTER: And then —

MR. KIRBY: I will be just as unsatisfying to you — (laughter) — as I have been to everybody else today.

REPORTER: That’s so prejudicial.

MR. KIRBY: But I also want to be — I got Mauritius up here — (holds up a page from the briefing book) — and nobody asked me. (Laughter.) Nobody. And I was ready today. (Laughter.)

That line of inquiry went nowhere, so the reporter moved to ask a “short series” of questions about Americans who are detained in other countries.

MR. KIRBY: “Short series”? (Laughter.)

REPORTER: Yes.

MR. KIRBY: “Series”? There’s no — there’s no such thing as a “short series.” Those two words don’t go together.

REPORTER: Your interjections do not make things shorter. (Laughter.) All right. First question is this —

MR. KIRBY: (Exhales.) (Laughter.)

Near the end of the briefing, a reporter moved to ask White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre about President Joe Biden’s two-day root canal, which caused him to miss an important meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Oh, tooth follow-up.

REPORTER: Tooth.

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Cute. (Laughter.)

REPORTER: So the local anesthesia —

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Everybody is a little giddy today.

REPORTER: I know. I feel it.

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: What is happening?

REPORTER: It feels — it has, like, Friday vibes. I’m not sure why.

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I know, not Monday — not Monday afternoon vibes. (Laughs.) …

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: So — gosh, I hope you guys — I never — I should never get a root canal here, because then I could see the judgment that comes — coming my way. Look, all I can say —

REPORTER: We thought you regard every day here as a root canal. (Laughter.)

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Thank you, Mr. To Wit. (Laughter.)

Ah, it’s all so funny, yucking it up over whether the president of the United States is in such bad health that he needed to be knocked unconscious for a medical procedure. See, the reporters, lame as they are, wanted to know if the White House invoked the 25th Amendment, which sets the guideline for succession should the president, you know, die.

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Hilarious.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.

Sylvester Stallone said Arnold Schwarzenegger is the “superior” action star even after years of animosity and competition between the two celebrities.

“The ’80s was a very interesting time because the definitive ‘action guy’ had not really been formed yet,” Stallone said in the newly released Netflix documentary “Arnold,” per IndieWire. “Up until that time, action was a car chase like ‘Bullitt’ or ‘The French Connection.’ A film all about intellect and innuendo and verbal this and verbal that.”

Stallone went on to say that Schwarzenegger was one of the first actors to make action movies more focused on the actor rather than the project.

“You actually relied upon your body to tell the story,” the “Rocky” lead said. “Dialogue was not necessary. I saw that there was an opportunity, because no one else was doing this except some other guy from Austria, who doesn’t need to say much… He was superior. He just had all the answers. He had the body. He had the strength. That was his character.”

“I had to get my ass kicked constantly, whereas Arnold, he never got hurt much,” Stallone said of their different on-screen personas. “And I’m going, ‘Arnold, you could go out and fight a dragon and you’d come back with a Band-Aid.’”

Schwarzenegger was equally complimentary toward his contemporary. “Every time he came out with a movie like ‘Rambo II,’ I had to figure out a way of now outdoing that. Without Stallone, I maybe wouldn’t have been as motivated in the ’80s to do the kind of movies that I did and to work as hard as I did. I’m a competitive person,” the Austrian-born actor said. 

Stallone told Forbes last November that he and Schwarzenegger “really disliked each other immensely” in the 80s and continuously for two decades as their action films were always competing.

“We were… this may sound a little vain, but I think we were pioneering a kind of genre at that time and it hasn’t been seen since really,” Stallone told the publication. “So the competition, because it’s his nature, he is very competitive and so am I… and I just thought it actually helped, but off-screen we were still competitive and that was not a healthy thing at all, but we’ve become really good friends.”