Three years into Joe Biden’s presidency, journalists covering the administration know what to expect when first lady Jill Biden appears: nothing.
The president, 81, has held the fewest news conferences or formal interviews of any modern commander in chief — leaving Biden’s escapades across the White House South Lawn to and from his Marine One helicopter as the best chance for the press to get some. face time.
When Biden is alone, it’s much easier to bait him with shouted questions, sometimes dragging himself around midnight for an exchange — despite the unflattering TV lights forcing him to raise his hand to shield his eyes from the glare.
However, the presence of Jill, 72, on such trips is a clear sign that there will be no questions, with the first lady making sure to hold her husband’s hand throughout the lawn.
Jill Biden’s role in protecting her husband from the media has come under new scrutiny after special counsel Robert Hur described the president in a report released Thursday as an “elderly man with a bad memory”.
Biden has held only three solo press conferences at the White House since taking office in January 2021. the most recentin November 2022, Jill arrived at the last minute and was seated at the very front of the state dining room by a burly aide – who positioned her so that reporters couldn’t see if the first lady at one point urged her husband to make a hasty retreat.
Joe Biden’s Classified Documents Investigation Report
- Special Counsel Robert Hur determined that President Biden “deliberately retained and disclosed classified documents” after leaving office as vice president in 2016.
- The records kept by Biden included documents on military and foreign policy in Afghanistan as well as other national security and foreign policy matters.
- Biden kept the classified documents in part to help him write his memoir. According to the report, Biden told a ghostwriter during a 2017 conversation that he “just found all the classified stuff down there.”
- Despite these findings, Hur’s 388-page report recommends that the president not face charges.
- The special prosecutor noted that Biden would likely present himself to a jury as an “older, friendly, well-meaning man with a poor memory” if he were to go to trial.
Such precautions might have been necessary after Biden’s second White House speech in January 2022, a marathon affair during which the president droned on for nearly two hours and made several notable factual errors and gaffes.
At that news conference, Biden suggested that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine would draw a minimal response from the United States, leaving Kiev officials dismayed and suggesting the president had caved. Vladimir Putin gives “green light” to invade – which he did weeks later.
“Why didn’t anyone stop this?” Jill Biden fumed to aides, demanding an explanation for her husband being left to rot in front of the world, according to excerpts from a forthcoming book by New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers, reported Friday by Axios.
“Everyone remained silent, looking at each other, then at her, then at each other,” Rogers writes. “That included the most powerful man in the world.
“Her husband essentially played along, offering no response, even though his aides slipped her a card suggesting she end the press conference,” the book adds.
The first lady also took on the role of manager for her husband, leading Joe off stage by the hand at an event last month to commemorate the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol after repeated instances where the president hesitated or wandered in the wrong direction after making remarks.
Jill isn’t alone: The White House staff has also gone to great lengths to shield the president from potentially embarrassing interactions.
At that same January 2022 press conference that caused the first lady so much angst, then-press secretary Jen Psaki — dressed in a distinctive pink blazer — stood up after about an hour in an apparent attempt to put an end to the debates.
Psaki sat back down as Biden continued to answer questions, only to get back up about 20 minutes later and walk toward a door about 50 feet from the press seating area in another apparent attempt to end the interrogation, which lasted approximately another 40 minutes. .
But the most notorious staff intervention came during the White House Easter Egg Roll in April 2022, when then-director of message planning Meghan Hays, dressed with an Easter bunny suit, burst in to prevent Biden from answering an Afghan reporter’s question and guided him away from the rope.
The White House press office also played its part, introducing a Byzantine pre-screening process to select which journalists were allowed to attend large indoor events that were open to all under previous administrations – leading to muttering that those closest to the administration were most likely to do so. be extended invitations.
The preselection was relaxed following a protest by members of the press corps in summer 2022but came back before Biden’s last-minute response to Hur’s report Thursday evening. Digital RSVP forms were sent out only minutes before the hastily scheduled event in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room and some journalists on campus at the Executive Mansion were denied access to that room relatively small.
Despite all the precautions taken, Biden’s penchant for saying bad things was never hidden for long.
At that November 2022 White House press conference, for example, Biden said he would take 10 questions from reporters from a list of pre-approved names, but he left after having none called that new – following a brutal blunder in which he said Russian troops were preparing to withdraw from the Iraqi city of Fallujah when he meant the Ukrainian city of Kherson.
These slip-ups have multiplied in recent weeks, with Biden mixing the names of current foreign leaders with those of their deceased predecessors. On Sunday, he told a Las Vegas audience that he had recently spoken with the late French President François Mitterrand, who died in 1996. In Manhattan on Wednesday, Biden reminded donors that he had discussed the Jan. 6 riot 2021 at the Capitol with Germans. Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who last held office in 1998 and died in 2017.
Thursday evening, moments after insisting “I know what I’m doing” in response to the Hur report, Biden Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, misidentified as “president of Mexico”.
The president has held no press conferences of any size since the APEC summit in Novemberwhere he appeared confused while standing alongside other world leaders and mispronounced the name of the place.
The same month, his re-election campaign launched the operation “Bubble wrap“, which, according to sources inside the New York Times, was intended to protect the president from his unflattering trips and stumbles – whether on the scene or during boarding Air Force One.
