Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s national press secretary TJ Ducklo seemed to grow irritated at a Fox News anchor after being asked several questions he said were partisan.
In a question posed by Special Report anchor Bret Baier about whether Biden has ever used a teleprompter to conduct local interviews or question and answer sessions, Ducklo refused to answer, dismissing it as a talking point of President Trump’s reelection campaign.
“This is straight from the Trump campaign talking points,” Ducklo said in response to Baier’s question, who responded that the campaign has been using that point as an attack on Biden.
“They’re using it. They talk about it every day. Can you say yes or no?” Baier asked.
“They talk about it every day because they don’t have a coherent argument for why Donald Trump deserves reelection, deserves four more years,” Ducklo said. “We know that he lied to the American people. We know that he has not shown leadership during this crisis, and they are desperate to throw anything they can against the wall to try to distract from that fact.”
Baier then said he understood the point but again told Ducklo that he wasn’t answering his question.
Ducklo responded by accusing Fox News of aiding the Trump campaign in the choosing of its questions.
“I’m not going to allow the Trump campaign to funnel their questions through Fox News and get me to respond to that,” he said.
Ducklo again accused the network of making excuses for Trump’s leadership. His response came after Baier asked whether Dr. Anthony Fauci was wrong when he said Trump’s private and public comments on the coronavirus didn’t have many discrepancies in them.
The topic came to light after audio recordings between veteran journalist Bob Woodward and Trump revealed the president said early on, he wanted to downplay the pandemic to avoid causing panic in the country.
When asked about the president’s words, Fauci said it wasn’t far off from what Trump told the White House Coronavirus Task Force at the time and what he later told the public.
“I know that you all are working overtime to try to find excuses for this president,” Ducklo responded. “We know from the president’s own words, he knew how serious this threat was. He did not implement the necessary steps to get testing to where we needed, to get contact tracing to where we needed, to actually mobilize PPE and get that around to hospitals around the country.”
Ducklo also pushed back on a clip shown of Biden saying he thought a travel ban on China seemed like a premature decision when the virus first broke out.
When pushed on it, Ducklo said Biden was never against the travel ban implemented by Trump and offered to issue fact checks to Fox News.
“Joe Biden has been clear about this,” he said, adding he felt the network and Trump both “liked” to reference the travel ban. “Again, I can send you the fact checks if they’re helpful. This has been fact-checked into oblivion.”
Baier said he asked because Trump talks about it frequently, and it’s likely to come up in presidential debates.
When Ducklo deferred the question to bring up Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Baier cut him off.
“I’m going to take it you’re not going to answer that question,” he said. “You’re going to send me some fact checks.”
