It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
President Joe Biden and his handlers have employed all the strategies possible to keep him from having to answer media questions after he gives remarks. At first, the pattern was a bit comical — and, try as they might to pretend that nothing was going on, it was obvious.
No wonder so many Americans think Biden isn’t cognitively sound.
Of course, this is no surprise: Conservative media has been calling it for a while, including during the presidential campaign, when it should have been evident to every observer that the former vice president wasn’t fit for office. At The Western Journal, we’ve been fighting to bring you the truth about Biden since the campaign began — and we’ll continue doing it. You can help us bring America the facts the mainstream media refuse to acknowledge by subscribing.
The newest tactic to limit questions from Biden’s handlers is to play music to shut the gaggle up. Here’s the strategy in action last month after Biden announced he was keeping Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair:
Joe Biden ignores questions from reporters while the White House blasts elevator music. pic.twitter.com/IMWJE72hrL
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 22, 2021
They couldn’t even play something decent; it sounds like they just picked out one of those “study music” channels on YouTube and let ’er rip at peak volume. If you want to clear out a room of reporters, that’s the way to do it — although it’s not exactly a sign of transparency.
However, the strategy requires good timing. It also requires the president to remember not to take questions.
Neither of these things happened on Thursday when Biden delivered his remarks at the “Summit for Democracy,” a virtual event designed to strengthen alliances between small-D democratic countries and to project strength to the world’s autocracies:
WH staff fail to play Biden off the stage as he decides to answer a question about inflation pic.twitter.com/G9bvHsNm4N
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) December 10, 2021
That’ll scare China.
In the context of the wider speech, it came as the president transitioned from his remarks — telling the world that free nations should “raise up our ambitions and rise to meet the challenges together” and mumbling that “I look forward to following through in the next year on all of the commitments that we’re making individually” — to a question-and-answer period, although not without tarrying to pick up a piece of paper he dropped on the ground first.
The next thing you knew, he was answering a question on the economy, saying he thought “you’ll see a change, um, sooner than — quicker than — more rapidly than — it will take — than most people think.”
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At one level, it wouldn’t have looked right for the leader of the world’s most powerful democracy not to take questions from the media. However, it’s not like this is a new phenomenon.
Here’s Biden refusing to take questions in September when he appeared with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson:
During a meeting between Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, staff abruptly order journalists to leave. pic.twitter.com/kJ4itX2kU4
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September 21, 2021
A few days later, in a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Biden advised him not to take questions from the press, either.
“The Indian press is much better behaved than the American press,” Biden told Modi. “I think, with your permission, you [should] not answer questions because they won’t ask any questions on point.”
WATCH: President Biden, during meeting with Indian PM Modi:
“The Indian press is much better behaved than the American press…I think, with your permission, you could not answer questions because they won’t ask any questions on point.” pic.twitter.com/VppL7973ma
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 24, 2021
Asked about this exchange, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the quiet part out loud when she told reporters during a briefing that Biden didn’t take questions because, well, goshdarnit, the media just doesn’t ask the questions he wants them to:
Psaki was just confronted by two reporters about Biden asking Indian Prime Minister Modi to not take questions from the American press.
Psaki then embarrassingly justifies the remark by saying sometimes the Press doesn’t ask about what Biden wants to talk about.
Watch. pic.twitter.com/LhOz9ItEEt
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) September 27, 2021
“I think what he said is that they’re not always on point,” Psaki said.
“Now I know that isn’t something that anyone wants to hear in here, but what I think he was conveying is, today he might want to talk about COVID vaccines, some of the questions were about that. … Some of the questions are not always about the topic he’s talking about in that day. I don’t think it was meant to be a hard cut at the members of the media, people he’s taken questions from today and on Friday as well.”
Biden, in other words, doesn’t have the mental plasticity to pivot when dealing with adversarial questions or topics he’s not prepared to discourse on that day. Comforting thought, that.
At the very least, the music doesn’t look quite as bad as when Biden’s staff has to stop the president from getting distracted by the media like it’s a shiny object:
Come along now…don’t get distracted by the reporters… pic.twitter.com/MlaLU9XiFF
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) June 25, 2021
However, it’s only unnoticeable when you get the timing right. Otherwise, it comes across like a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.
Next time, you get the feeling they’ll send a marching band out instead. Kind of hard to go off-script when the trumpet section is shooing you off stage, after all.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.