It’s no secret that Joe Biden, as an octogenarian who can barely remember his own title, isn’t exactly the best person to put in front of a microphone or camera. But, according to his former press secretary, the reason why he’s not held so many press conferences isn’t what you might think.
Jen Psaki, like all of America, knows that Biden doesn’t exactly do well when talking to anyone, let alone the press. Understandably, this would have to be why we see him doing far more friendly talk shows and podcast interviews than news conferences, right?
Well, Psaki doesn’t think so.
The former press secretary turned MSNBC host recently appeared on ABC’s “The View,” and naturally, the topic of Joe Biden came up.
As host Alyssa Farrah Griffen noted, Biden has held a mere fraction of the number of news conferences of either his predecessor, Donald Trump, or his former boss, Barack Obama.
According to a New York Times article written in April of 2023, Biden had averaged about ten news conferences a year during his presidency. Meanwhile Trump averaged 19.5 and Obama a whopping 23.
Similarly, his number of interviews in comparison was also severely lacking.
At the time, Biden had only given 54 interviews, with most of them being the more softball celebrity ones where nothing was really discussed. By the same time in their tenures at the White House, Trump had given 202 and Obama 275.
Psaki also admitted that this was a good thing for the Biden White House – but not because he couldn’t do it.
Instead, she offered the idea that due to a number of changes and challenges with media in recent years, fewer news conferences are a better way to talk to People.
She said, “I think the benefit of the media environment right now – there’s a lot of challenges, but I’m going to start with the optimistic side – is that there are so many choices.”
And as was pointed out, over the years, Americans are choosing to watch or listen to traditional news outlets less and less these days. So, doing news conferences in the conventional sense might not be the best outlet for the White House, even if they had a coherent president.
“When you’re communicating from the White House, I mean, respect for freedom of speech and freedom of the press is important, but you’re also really just trying to communicate with the American people. So my view is he should come on ‘The View’ before he does a press conference.”
Now, she does make a point here.
Perhaps these softball interviews are a better way to get the message out there. Or at least it might be if an actual message was being given.
Instead, we still find ourselves looking and hearing an old man who can barely remember his own name, let alone what his national policies are. Rather than talking about issues that matter to us, like what’s going on at our southern border, we find Biden discussing ice cream and how proud he is of Hunter…
And should Biden actually start talking about real issues in these interviews, I don’t think Psaki will have the same view on them being a good thing for the Biden White House.
