President Biden will visit politically conservative states after criticism he has been spending too much time in election battlegrounds on his coronavirus package publicity tour.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters traveling with Biden to his first “Help is Here” stop in Chester County, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, that the president would make trips to “redder states” soon.
“I would say stay tuned. We’ll be certainly going to some redder states, states he didn’t win, or very blue states and states he didn’t campaign in. So, I wouldn’t over-read into it that way,” she said.
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Psaki, though, would not say whether that included Ohio. The Buckeye State will host a competitive Senate race in 2022, which could change which party controls the chamber. The Senate is currently evenly divided.
“It’s certainly one of the many wonderful states in this country that he could travel to,” she said.
Psaki’s gaggle, convened on Air Force One, was dominated by foreign policy queries after North Korea sent a nuclear warning to the United States, issued as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin make their way to South Korea for talks over security concerns with counterparts from the Blue House and Japan.
“Our objective is always going to be focused on diplomacy and denuclearization of North Korea,” she said.
Psaki’s gaggle coincided, too, with the declassification of an Office of the Director of National Intelligence report into 2020 election interference. The U.S. intelligence community found Russia and Iran tried to meddle in last year’s contest between Biden and former President Donald Trump, but China did not.
“The review is continuing on Solar Winds, of course, but also on the bounties on the heads of troops, of course, 2020 election interference as well,” she said of Russia’s suspected involvement in the hacking of federal government systems through a SolarWinds Orion management software update.
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“We will see that review through, and then, of course, the president reserves the right to decide to respond in a manner and time of his choosing, seen and unseen,” she added.
