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AN EMBARRASSING DAY FOR THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS. There was a huge buildup before President Biden’s first formal news conference Thursday. Why had he waited 64 days to meet the press? Were his White House press handlers worried he would commit some classic Biden gaffes? Would he do just that?
Biden was Biden. He handled some questions competently. He wandered around on others. He seemed most energized when he blamed his predecessor, President Donald Trump, for the mess at the border that his own policies have created. He stonewalled the press on the question of letting reporters — and the nation — see the overcrowded pens in which his administration is keeping illegal border crossers who are unaccompanied minors. “I will commit to transparency as soon as I am in a position to be able to implement what we are doing right now,” Biden said. In other words — you’ll see it when we want you to see it, and not a minute before.
But Biden’s performance wasn’t the worst in the East Room on Thursday. The ten reporters selected by the White House to ask questions ignored major issues, failed to follow up, and, in at least one instance, attempted to flatter Biden in a performance that added up to an embarrassment for the White House press corps.
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The biggest omission: The reporters did not ask a single question about the COVID pandemic. Not one. Not about vaccines. Not about masks. Not about economic effects. Not about schools. Nothing. There was no explanation for it, other than perhaps the reporters who were selected to ask questions were remarkably out of touch with the American people, who consistently list the pandemic as the most important issue facing the country today. Biden even began the news conference with a statement about his pandemic policies. The reporters’ lack of interest was simply inexplicable. The headline in Politico was “Biden meets the press and the pandemic disappears.“
Just as bad, some of the reporters failed to follow up — failed to explore the meaning of Biden’s answers — in a way that left Biden completely unchallenged. Take the many questions about the Democratic drive to eliminate the Senate filibuster. They were asked from a why-don’t-you-do-it standpoint — that is, from the standpoint of the left wing of the Democratic Party. Reporters failed entirely to probe Biden’s earlier support for the filibuster and why it appears to be changing.
Take this exchange between Biden and CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins:
COLLINS: Regarding the filibuster: At John Lewis’s funeral, President Barack Obama said he believed the filibuster was a “relic” of the Jim Crow era. Do you agree?
BIDEN: Yes.
COLLINS: And if not, why not abolish it if it’s a relic of the Jim Crow era?
BIDEN: [Long pause.] Successful electoral politics is the art of the possible. Let’s figure out how we can get this done and move in the direction of significantly changing the abuse of even the filibuster rule first. It’s been abused from the time it came into being — by an extreme way in the last 20 years. Let’s deal with the abuse first.
COLLINS: It sounds like you’re moving closer to eliminating the filibuster. Is that correct?
BIDEN: I answered your question.
From a reportorial standpoint, it was an astonishing exchange. The principals of the last two Democratic administrations — President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris — all served in the United States Senate. All embraced the filibuster. Harris, most recently in the Senate, embraced it last year. Obama embraced it when he was a senator — he even voted to filibuster a Supreme Court nomination [Justice Samuel Alito] back when that was allowed. And of course Biden used it many, many, many times in the 36 years he served in the Senate.
That could, in an enquiring reporter’s mind, lead to a question: What about you and your Democratic allies, Mr. President? But it appears no one among those selected to ask questions thought of it. The reporters’ omission was enough to drive former Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, commenting on Fox News “Special Report,” to distraction. “What a perfect follow-up question,” Gowdy said. “Was it a racist relic when his vice president used it less than a year ago?…Was it a racist relic when you used it, Mr. President?” Those follow-ups were never asked, even though Biden allowed a lot of follow-ups.
Finally, the fawning. Asking about the influx of unaccompanied minor children illegally crossing the border, PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor said this to Biden: “The perception of you that got you elected — as a moral, decent man — is the reason why a lot of immigrants are coming to this country and entrusting you with unaccompanied minors.” It was first-class sweet talk from a press that appears unconcerned about its reputation for obsequiousness.
The ironic part was that Biden spurned the flattery because it conflicted with his (false) explanation of the border crisis. He repeatedly claimed that the border influx was nothing new, that it had happened the same way over and over in the past, and that it therefore had nothing to do with him or his policies. So he rejected Alcindor’s explanation for the influx — that he is “a moral, decent man” — and said that the illegal crossers were coming because of the weather and conditions in their home countries.
All in all, a terrible performance from the press. “They were strange questions,” former President Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Thursday night. “It was like softballs, like you are throwing softballs.” Indeed, there were a lot of softballs from a press corps that threw the hardest hardballs they could imagine at Trump. Now, Trump concluded, “It is just a different world.” Yes, it is.
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