Opinion by Jim Geraghty | Guess what, White House correspondents: Biden’s joke was on you
there; Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both told Congress, under oath, that they had made just such a recommendation to the president.Given that disquieting context, now let’s consider Biden’s “cheat sheet” at his April 26 joint news conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
If the White House press staff wants to know the general topic that a reporter plans to ask about, there’s little or no harm done — “So-and-so from that wire service has a question about Ukraine,” etc. It’s reasonable for the White House to want the president to know what topics he should be prepared to discuss.
But what Biden was holding, as seen in a photograph from the event, was much more specific than that., a “card in Biden’s hand, titled ‘Question # 1,’ clearly directs the president to call on a Los Angeles Times reporter, Courtney Subramanian. The card has Subramanian’s name , her affiliation and even a headshot. More important, photos taken by an Agence France-Presse photographer show what Subramanian was likely to ask about.
There are signs that reporters are growing restive. When Biden, during his recent trip to Ireland, skipped the tradition of holding a news conference while abroad, reporters made clear their general frustration with their lack of access to Biden.last month that Biden has held the fewest news conferences and granted the fewest interviews — 54 — since Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump, by contrast, gave 202 during his first two years in office.
If reporters covering Biden want him to answer more questions, one way to encourage it would be to make his inaccessibility a recurring theme of their coverage. But, again, it’s reasonable to surmise that if Biden could handle the mental and physical rigors of holding news conferences with greater frequency, he would do so. His difficulty answering questions without a cheat sheet should be a major issue in discussions of the 2024 presidential race.
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