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‘His handlers are petrified’: Biden did just 7 formal sit-down interviews with journalists in all of 2022

December 26, 2022 | | Print Article

As 2022 comes to an end and Americans brace for whatever fresh hell President Joe Biden’s administration will deliver upon the nation in 2023, POTUS, who campaigned on bringing civility back to the White House’s relationship with the media, has largely ignored real journalists, agreeing to sit down for a serious interview with one just seven times over the past year — a year that has been riddled with crippling inflation, chaos at the border with Mexico, energy and food shortages, and the threat of nuclear war over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Rather than risk any hard-hitting questions, President Biden has instead elected to yuk it up with the likes of Jay Leno and “50 First Dates” star, actress Drew Barrymore, who now hosts a daytime talk show.

Biden’s first sit-down of 2022 was with NBC’s Lester Holt in an early February, pre-Super Bowl interview.

It took the president more than four months to agree to a second — an off-camera interview he granted to the Associated Press, according to Fox News.

“The following month, Biden sat down with Israeli anchor Yonit Levi of Channel 12. He then waited until September before doing an interview with CBS News’s Scott Pelley that aired on ’60 Minutes,'” Fox News reported. “In October, in the final stretch ahead of the 2022 midterms, Biden did interviews with CNN’s Jake Tapper, MSNBC host and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, and Nexstar’s Reshad Hudson.”

With the midterms behind him, Biden avoided any more potentially “hot” seats. Not since October 27 has the president granted a real journalist an interview.

“We’ve never seen a more packaged, homogenized, protected president than Joe Biden,” said Fox News contributor and media analyst, Joe Concha. “His handlers are petrified of him sitting down for anything resembling a challenging interview.”

He did, however, play a few rousing rounds of “The Newlywed Game” with Barrymore and his wife, Jill, from the comfort of the White House, during which the most hard-hitting question was about FLOTUS’ favorite “naughty” snack.


(Video: YouTube)

The president blew the answer, by the way. Instead of answering “french fries” like a good husband, he whispered, “wine.”

Even Vice President Kamala Harris, whose “word-salad” answers to nearly every question posed to her have become the stuff of Twitter legend, has made herself more accessible to the press.

“Biden was outdone by his second in command, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has done at least 12 interviews with news organizations in 2022, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and Vice News,” Fox News reports.

But the Big Guy apparently prefers talking to friendly celebrities who won’t ruin a good time with questions that actually matter to the American people.

As American Wire News reported, on the anniversary of the deadly Kabul airport attack in Afghanistan that killed 13 U.S. servicemembers, Biden was driving electric cars with Jay Leno for an episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage.”

“He is tone deaf and insensitive,” Darin Hoover, father of Taylor, a Marine staff sergeant who was killed on August 26, 2021, said at the time. “It’s ridiculous.”

Biden joined Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night show in June, and, in November, he dished with radio hosts D.L Hughley, Willie Moore, Jr., and Al Sharpton.

And who could forget the president’s softball sit-down with trans TikTok influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, who thinks donning a dress and talking like a 13-year-old girl from an outdated afterschool special makes him a woman?

The president has even shied away from giving press conferences, with Fox News reporting, “No president has done fewer press conferences in their second year in office than Biden since former President Reagan.”

When he does subject himself to questions from the press, Biden is given a list of pre-selected reporters to call on in order to avoid any questions that might prompt an answer his White House press secretaries will later have to walk back.

When she was still at the dreaded podium, former press secretary Jen Psaki even admitted that the staff discourages Biden from taking impromptu questions.

“That is not something we recommend. In fact, a lot of times we say ‘don’t take questions,'” Psaki told David Axelrod last year. “But he’s going to do what he wants to do because he’s the President of the United States.”

 

Melissa Fine
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