It would be funny if it werenât 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 â and, try as they might to pretend that nothing was going on, it was obvious.
No wonder so many Americans think Biden isnât 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 wasnât fit for office. At The Western Journal, weâve been fighting to bring you the truth about Biden since the campaign began â and weâll 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 Bidenâs handlers is to play music to shut the gaggle up. Hereâs the strategy in action last month after Biden announced he was keeping Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair:
They couldnât even play something decent; it sounds like they just picked out one of those âstudy musicâ channels on YouTube and let âer rip at peak volume. If you want to clear out a room of reporters, thatâs the way to do it â although itâs 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 âSummit for Democracy,â a virtual event designed to strengthen alliances between small-D democratic countries and to project strength to the worldâs autocracies:
Thatâll scare China.
In the context of the wider speech, it came as the president transitioned from his remarks â telling the world that free nations should âraise up our ambitions and rise to meet the challenges togetherâ and mumbling that âI look forward to following through in the next year on all of the commitments that weâre making individuallyâ â 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 âyouâll see a change, um, sooner than â quicker than â more rapidly than â it will take â than most people think.â
At one level, it wouldnât have looked right for the leader of the worldâs most powerful democracy not to take questions from the media. However, itâs not like this is a new phenomenon.
Hereâs Biden refusing to take questions in September when he appeared with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson:
A few days later, in a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Biden advised him not to take questions from the press, either.
âThe Indian press is much better behaved than the American press,â Biden told Modi. âI think, with your permission, you not answer questions because they wonât ask any questions on point.â
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 didnât take questions because, well, goshdarnit, the media just doesnât ask the questions he wants them to:
âI think what he said is that theyâre not always on point,â Psaki said.
âNow I know that isnât 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 heâs talking about in that day. I donât think it was meant to be a hard cut at the members of the media, people heâs taken questions from today and on Friday as well.â
Biden, in other words, doesnât have the mental plasticity to pivot when dealing with adversarial questions or topics heâs not prepared to discourse on that day. Comforting thought, that.
At the very least, the music doesnât look quite as bad as when Bidenâs staff has to stop the president from getting distracted by the media like itâs a shiny object:
However, itâs only unnoticeable when you get the timing right. Otherwise, it comes across like a âSaturday Night Liveâ sketch.
Next time, you get the feeling theyâll 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.