President Joe Biden’s first term in office has seen the White House depart from many of his predecessor’s norms — and one is making recent history.
Biden has been almost impossible to find when it comes to one-on-one interviews, critics have pointed out.
Biden hasn’t sat down for a formal television interview since February 10th, when he spoke with Lester Holt of NBC News 78 days ago.
“In his first year in office, Biden did just 22 formal sit-downs, compared to Donald Trump’s 92 and Barack Obama’s 156, according to data from Towson University’s White House Transition Project,” Fox News reported.
“Fox News found that through this point, Trump had given 32 interviews on a visual medium or platform compared to 20 for Biden.”
Biden’s lack of interviews even has a sharp contrast within his own White House. Vice President Kamala Harris has done 31 interviews so far this year to Biden’s three. Since she took office, Harris has sat down for 89 total media appearances to Biden’s 25.
Fox News correspondent Joe Concha told Fox News Digital that Biden’s media disappearance in recent months is no surprise — interviews are a “lose-lose” for the White House.
“It seems invariably when the president does do any interviews or takes questions from the press, cleanup on aisle five occurs not long after. But if he isn’t doing interviews, then he can’t sell his agenda,” Concha said.
“Canned speeches and tweets likely written for him aren’t going to move the needle one bit,” he said. “He needs to sit down with somebody with real journalistic credibility and take the tough questions, but that’s obviously not going to happen anytime soon.”
“And yet, the soon-to-be-ex White House press secretary continues to insist that he takes questions from the press all the time, which is about the best unintentional comedy out there.”
The relative silence from Biden comes amid a floundering domestic agenda, flagging poll numbers, and a looming midterm election — and it has reportedly demoralized Democratic leadership.
“Given how dysfunctional Congress is right now, someone is taking too many edibles if they think they can deal with a slimmed-down [Build Back Better bill] in July or August,” Jim Manley, a former aide to late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told Politico. “Congress simply can’t deal with it. It’s now or never and leaning towards never.”
The Horn editorial team