Host Ainsley Earhardt later asked the president to defend his decision to campaign even as the Democratic Party holds its convention, breaking with election-year norms.

“I have no choice because we have a fake media in this country, so I have to work,” Trump responded. “I don’t have the time not to. And we have a guy that doesn’t come out of his basement, and the media covers him. … This guy doesn’t come out of his basement, and he hasn’t taken one question.”

It is true.

As Biden remains hunkered down in his basement, keeping his mouth shut and forgoing tough interviews and in-person campaign events, legacy media are doing much of his campaigning for him, promoting both the presumptive Democratic nominee and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, with exceptionally glowing news coverage. And when national newsrooms are not actively hyping Biden’s campaign, they are running defense for him, all the while hammering away at the incumbent president for even the little things.

At this rate, the 2020 election will be a fight exclusively between Trump and an assortment of news outlets because the Democratic candidate himself seems perfectly happy to sit on the sidelines and not say or do much of anything.

Members of the press, for example, seemed more excited than the Biden campaign last week when the former vice president announced Harris as his running mate. Reporters dedicated an enormous amount of ink and airtime trying to convince audiences that the California senator is an amazing and historic choice for vice president. The overwhelmingly positive coverage of Biden’s running mate announcement, at times, sounded more like in-kind campaign contributions than straight news reporting. Some media organizations have gone as far as to pitch the California senator as a “moderate” and a “centrist,” which is a talking point that not even the Biden campaign or its allies have tried using.

And it is not just Harris for whom members of national media wag their tails. Many appear to be all-in for the actual Democratic nominee himself. The lopsided pro-Biden coverage is apparent in the generally positive press the former vice president enjoys, but it is really apparent when newsrooms downplay or outright ignore Biden incidents that would otherwise be dayslong news events were a Republican found guilty of the same offense.

There was no uproar, no outraged fact-checks or snarky on-air graphics, after the presumptive Democratic nominee tried to whip up racial resentment by misleadingly tying the 2014 shooting death of Ferguson, Missouri, resident Michael Brown to the need to tackle “systemic racism” and corrupt law enforcement. News outlets similarly went out of their way to mischaracterize in the gentlest terms possible the moment when Biden said that “unlike the African American community,” the “Latino community is an incredibly diverse community.” Rather than suggest that the former vice president’s remarks are proof of America’s long history of white supremacy, as the press surely would have done had the president or a member of his administration uttered similar remarks, major media instead reported that Biden merely drew a “distinction,” “contrasted” communities, and compared “diversity.”

As the press’s attempts to sell the Democratic ticket become more transparent by the day, there is little more than a whimper from major media over the fact that the former vice president refuses to take questions from reporters. There is very little objection to the fact that Biden constantly turns down serious news interviews in favor of friendly exchanges with celebrities. The lack of consternation from reporters is enough to make a guy suspicious of the Fourth Estate.

Last week, on Thursday, Trump held a White House press briefing, taking dozens of questions from reporters from multiple news organizations.

“Sir, Mr. President, after three and a half years,” asked HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Date, “do you regret, at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”

The question came one day after Biden and Harris appeared together for the first time on the 2020 campaign trail. They did not take a single question from reporters.