White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday defended President Joe Biden’s decision to address the nation on the spate of mass shootings that have plagued the US in recent weeks after a Fox News reporter suggested the speech was meant as a distraction from other issues.

After Ms Jean-Pierre’s office announced the address as an addition to Mr Biden’s schedule, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy challenged her about the reasons for doing so at her daily White House press briefing.

“You guys at the White House had some very hard headlines this week about inflation and about baby formula,” he said. “If there’s nothing new that he can point to in this speech tonight, did you just schedule to get people talking about something else?”

The White House press secretary immediately pushed back at the suggestion by reminding Doocy that lives were lost in each of the shootings Mr Biden was to speak about.

“People have died in the past couple of weeks. In particular, we had 19 kids die in Uvalde just recently from a mass shooter – came into their classroom and killed them, plus their two teachers. We had people doing everyday things on a Saturday like some of us do, go to the grocery store and 10 of them were murdered. Just last night in Tulsa, we’re learning of people who were, again, killed,” she said.

She added that the issue of gun violence is “very important and real” for Mr Biden and for the families he has met with in the wake of the recent shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, and said it was “disheartening” to hear Doocy suggest that he was using those mass murders as “a political tool”.