Ex-GOP Strategist Says WHCD Events Should Make People Recite ‘Biden Is A Duly Elected President’ to Get In
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PR veteran and former Republican strategist and lobbyist Juleanna Glover says people should be forced to say, on video recording, that President Joe Biden legitimately defeated former President Donald Trump in order to gain entry to White House Correspondents Dinner events.
The WHCD weekend is a time for takes, ones which usually involve bravely taking on the “coziness” of the press and the administration they cover.
But Glover’s take has to do with the risk of chumminess with adherents and acolytes of the administration that’s out of power. In an interview with Politico’s Michael Schaffer, Glover rather eloquently distills the dilemma of mingling with proponents of The Big Lie with a single question: “On a weekend dedicated to freedom of the press, is it okay to raise a glass and toast with a seditionist?”
And to prevent the “normalization” she fears, Glover says she won’t mingle with “deniers,” and has a suggestion for anyone running a WHCD event this weekend:
Glover, for the record, says she’ll socialize this weekend: She’s planning a low-key get-together of her own, at the same time as the big dinner, and set to include human-rights activists from Rwanda, Syria, and Ukraine. “I’ll go out to things, yes,” she says. “But will I be socializing with deniers? I don’t think so.”
Instead, she offers a solution incorporating the sponsored backdrops where guests typically pose for pictures while walking into A-list parties: “Instead of those absurd step and repeat set ups at the entrance of every event, they should just have a single microphone linked to a video recorder,” she says. “Everyone should just stop and repeat that Biden is a duly elected president in front of a live mic. If you can’t do that, then GTFO. This weekend is about celebrating a free press that at its aspirational best underpins our shared truths and seditionist lies that threaten the principle of the peaceful transfer of power are incompatible to that.”
That could make for some lonely times. Despite the fact that President Biden defeated Trump in an electoral landslide that has been reaffirmed over and over by state officials from Trump’s own party, a whopping 76 percent of Republicans do not believe Biden “legitimately” won.
