Reporters are starting to complain about Biden’s refusal to take questions when world leaders visit.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we track President Biden’s habit of hiding from the press, call out a fluff story from the Philadelphia Inquirer, and hit more media misses.
Biden’s Press-Averse Presidency
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre last week dismissed reporters’ concerns that President Biden hardly submits himself for questioning from the press. “This is a president that takes shouted questions often,” she said.
The next day, Biden sat alongside Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar and laughed as the press shouted questions and White House aides asked reporters to leave.
WATCH: Joe Biden smiling as reporters hurled questions at him after meeting with Irish Prime Minister pic.twitter.com/f01q9YMEMf
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 17, 2023
One day earlier, a reporter asked why the schedule for Varadkar’s visit did not include a press conference and suggested it has become a pattern that the press does not get an opportunity to ask questions when world leaders visit.
Jean-Pierre replied: “You’re going to have an opportunity, or your colleagues are going to have an opportunity, to ask questions during the pool spray at the Oval that happens every time a head of state visits. So that is an opportunity to be able to pose a question to the president or the head of state that is visiting at the White House on that day.”
Jean-Pierre says the press is allowed to ask questions "every time a head of state visits."
Multiple reporters correct her, saying Biden "never answers questions," "we get yelled at," and "the press is always shouted down." KJP laughs nervously pic.twitter.com/HqQqub0kRa
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 16, 2023
Reporters pushed back saying Biden “never answers questions during those pool sprays.”
“That’s not true. He has — he’s answered,” she said. Reporters responded that it is “very seldom” that Biden responds to questions and noted they get “shouted at” and “shoved out.”
Jean-Pierre seemed eager to avoid blame by noting press conferences with other world leaders would need to be coordinated with the country that is visiting and therefore is not something that is “unilaterally decided.”
“I cannot speak to if — who’s going to take questions or who’s not going to take questions,” she said. “As you know, this is a President that takes shouted questions often.”
But the reality is, Biden takes questions far less than his predecessors.
Biden has held just ten joint press conferences since taking office — three in 2021, six in 2022 and one this year. By contrast, in their respective first years in office, Donald Trump held 20, Barack Obama held 16, George W. Bush held 14, and Bill Clinton held 26, according to an analysis from UC Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project.
Biden has done an average of 10.5 press conferences a year in his first two years in office.
Meanwhile, throughout their entire presidencies, Trump held an average of 22, Obama held an average of 20.38, Bush held an average of 26.25 and Clinton held an average of 24.13.
Biden has had numerous “exchanges” with reporters, however. An exchange is when the president takes questions from reporters “incidentally alongside some other meeting or event,” including while the president is moving from one location to another or when he takes questions at the end of planned remarks. But these exchanges can be extremely brief, sometimes featuring only one-word responses from the president.
He had 284 exchanges in his first two years in office, while Trump had 286, Obama had 76, Bush had 243 and Clinton had 390 in that same time period.
Biden’s prior encounters with reporters can offer insight into why the White House is not eager to offer Biden up for regular questioning — he has a habit of bullying and criticizing reporters.
Biden complained last month that the reporters who cover him should be “more polite people,” and then refused to answer any questions at the end of a brief address he gave in response to a string of unidentified aerial objects.
At the conclusion of his remarks, he began to walk away, but stopped and turned around as reporters shouted questions over one another. He appeared poised to respond to a question, but instead said, “Give me a break man.” While it was unclear which question Biden was responding to, one reporter could be heard asking the president whether his relationship with China is compromised by his family’s business relationships.
After more inaudible shouting from the press, Biden told a reporter “you can come to my office and ask that question when we have more polite people.”
It was the latest example of Biden criticizing U.S. reporters for being impolite, being “stupid,” or asking “stupid” questions.
In September 2021, Biden told Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, that “the Indian press is much better behaved than the American press.” He then suggested they not take any questions from reporters “because they won’t ask any questions on point.”
That same month, during a meeting with Boris Johnson, then U.K. prime minister, Biden wished Johnson “good luck” when he asked to take questions from reporters. After two British reporters asked questions, White House staff cut Johnson off mid-sentence and ordered the press to leave the room. No American reporters were allowed to ask questions.
Last year, Biden was caught insulting Fox News reporter Peter Doocy for asking if he believed inflation was a “political liability” in the midterms.
“That’s a great asset — more inflation,” Biden responded on a hot mic. “What a stupid son of a b****.”
Biden later called Doocy and apologized for the remark.
Just weeks before the Doocy incident, Biden had a sharp exchange with another reporter who asked about his Atlanta speech on voting rights that offended many Republicans.
The reporter noted at Biden’s press conference that he had campaigned on a return to civility and acknowledged that Biden disputes the characterization that he called opponents of the voting rights bills Bull Connor or George Wallace, but instead that he meant they’re in the same camp.
Before the reporter could finish his question Biden raised his voice: “Go back and read what I said and tell me if you think I called anyone who called on the side . . . position of Bull Connor that they were Bull Connor. That is an interesting reading of English. I assume you got into journalism because you liked to write.”
And when Biden is not being a bully, oftentimes he is flat-out lying.
During a recent interview with Kal Penn, Biden falsely claimed that he had an “epiphany” on supporting gay marriage while he was in high school, despite going on to spend nearly 50 years opposing it. Biden voted for the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act as a senator. In 2006, he said “marriage is between a man and a woman.”
Biden: “I can remember exactly when my epiphany [on supporting gay marriage] was … I was a senior in high school. And my dad was dropping me off and I remember I was about to get out of the car and I looked to my right and two well-dressed men in suits kissed each other." pic.twitter.com/0aHlUQ7ghJ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 14, 2023
He also made some controversial comments about his own Irish heritage while speaking at the Friends of Ireland luncheon with Varadkar. “I’m the only Irishman you’ve ever met though that’s never had a drink, so, I’m okay,” Biden said. “I’m really not Irish.”
He spoke about visiting Ireland and seeing his family members and joked that “there are so many and they actually weren’t in jail.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, for her part, has not proven particularly adept at public speaking either. She recently gave a less-than-substantive interview to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Asked if there was any discussion in the White House about what the blowback would be for approving the Willow Oil project, she replied, as she typically does, with an indecipherable word salad: “Well, I think that the concerns are based on what we should all be concerned about,” she said. “But the solutions have to be and include what we are doing in terms of going forward, in terms of investments.”
Headline Fail of the Week
The Philadelphia Inquirer was apparently having a slow news day last week when it published a story titled, “Meet the woman who gifted Ron DeSantis a ‘fascist’ snowflake. It’s not the first she’s made.”
The paper’s reporter, who covers “trending national news,” interviewed a self-described “craftivist” who has “gifted” several Republican candidates with hand-cut snowflakes that feature secret messages. The midwestern woman gave DeSantis a snowflake that said “fascist” within its pattern during a stop on the governor’s book tour in Iowa. She posed for a photo with DeSantis and the snowflake that was shared widely online.
“Over the years, she’s made similar snowflakes for politicians including former presidential candidate and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) — each time taking smiling photos and presenting them with her creation,” the story explains.
“Her designs aren’t just reserved for Republicans,” it adds. “She’s made it a challenge to snowflake and selfie any politico she meets.” However, Democrats appear to receive actual gifts: snowflakes featuring a representative’s first name, or, for Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) one with the word “persist” hidden inside.
Media Misses
• In her first week back in the spotlight since leaving the White House in May, Jen Psaki claimed MSNBC, her new employer, “has a very high standard of what is factual.” On her new show, Inside with Jen Psaki, the former press secretary, used Bethany Mandel’s recent viral clip where she struggles to define “woke” to suggest wokeism isn’t “as potent of a campaign issue” as Republicans hoped and that “it sounds like you can let your woke flag fly.”
• ABC News said Friday it has “not reviewed nor verified the contents” of Hunter Biden’s laptop or hard drive while reporting on his counter lawsuit against a Delaware computer repairman. This puts ABC News well behind even other mainstream outlets. The New York Post reported on the laptop in October 2020, Politico then verified the laptop in September 2021 and the New York Times independently verified the laptop in March 2022. The Washington Post, NBC News, CNN and CBS News have all since completed their own reviews.
• The View co-host Sunny Hostin showed just how out-of-touch she is when she said she doesn’t like supermarkets and has not been in one since before the pandemic started. “That’s when I discovered Instacart. And I give them a big tip because they don’t always pay their people well. And it’s — so, that’s been an issue I think for the company. But man, you can get toiletries, you can get fire logs, you know, those big Bounty towels you don’t want to carry.”