Grading President Biden and The Media on ‘The Longest News Conference In Presidential History’

Tommy ChristopherJan 20th, 2022, 2:55 pm
 

President Joe Biden made a lot of news at his marathon press conference, but not every reporter covered themselves in glory.

For Biden, the results were mixed.

The president surprised many when, after months of criticism for not doing more formal press conferences, he went rogue and kept taking questions long after the presser’s expected endpoint. It was a winning decision that prompted positive coverage and had White House reporters calling it “the longest news conference in presidential history.”

On the substance, President Biden demonstrated command of the issues and stamina, and a surplus of the plain-spokenness that he is known for — which also caused him some trouble.

On style points, Biden did visibly struggle at times to fight through the artifacts of the stutter that he has struggled with for most of his life, a fact with which his supporters are well-acquainted by now.

And he wandered pretty far off-topic during one question about the political effect of school closures. But the happy accident there is that it morphed into a soliloquy about the state of modern media and cable news — right in our wheelhouse.

The president also displayed toughness, hitting back at criticisms — sometimes viscerally — and warning global rivals in what some journalists referred to as “stark” terms. He displayed that thousand-watt charm as well, at one point zinging Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy by saying “You always ask me the nicest questions,” and after Doocy replied “All right, I got a whole binder full,” Biden added “None of them make a lot of sense to me…”

I think fair-minded Americans who watched saw what I saw: a president speaking with authority, expertise, and authenticity. And the tactic of answering questions “til they drop” is one Biden should use more often.

The media — or most of it — did not perform as well, in my view.

By the way, despite what some may think, I don’t believe there is any chance Biden’s audible caught White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki by surprise. The president certainly must have told Psaki he might go long, and she probably tried to talk him out of it.

And Psaki probably cringed when the boss called on disgraced ex-Fox Newser James Rosen of conspiracy-mongering Newsmax. But surprisingly, I would not count Rosen’s as one of the worst questions.

Citing a poll that found 49%  of registered voters disagreed with the statement, “Joe Biden is mentally fit” (only Republicans answered with a majority, at 84%), Rosen asked “Why do you suppose such large segments of the American electorate have come to harbor such profound concerns about your cognitive fitness?”

“I have no idea,” was the president’s response, which seems to be an emerging theme for garden-variety trollishness. Think of his response to the “Let’s go Brandon” dad who tried to ruin Christmas.

Was it an unpleasant question? Was it rude and shitty? Yes and yes, but Rosen cited actual data and posed the question fairly. If the president had chosen to, he could have elaborated or rattled off an answer like “Curtain. Flag. Reporter. Chair. Psaki. Cringing.”

Even Doocy’s question — “Why are you trying so hard in your first year to pull the country so far to the left?” —was a gift to Biden, allowing him to burnish his moderate image by allowing him to rattle off accomplishments and remind Doocy that “you guys have been trying to convince me that I am Bernie Sanders. I’m not. I like him, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I’m not a socialist. I’m a mainstream Democrat, and I have been.”

No, some of the worst questions were from reporters trying hard to misunderstand the president’s remarks about Ukraine and expelling bad takes on voting rights.

But the award for worst question has to go to NBC News’ Kristen Welker, who actually finished in a tie with Kristen Welker.

Welker started off well enough with a fairly decent follow-up about Ukraine and a question about voting rights activists who skipped Biden’s speech.

But then Welker hit a dumb-shit twofer by asking “You put Vice President Harris in charge of voting rights.  Are you satisfied with her work on this issue?  And can you guarantee — do you commit that she will be your running mate in 2024, provided that you run again?”

The administration and the president have been saying for almost a year that Vice President Kamala Harris will be on the ticket in 2024, and yet reporters keep asking this dumb and insulting question.

“Yes and yes,” the president replied, but Welker was not content to just take the “L.”

WELKER: Okay. You don’t care to expand?

THE PRESIDENT: Pardon me?

WELKER: Do you care to expand —

THE PRESIDENT: No, there’s no need to.

WELKER: on voting?

THE PRESIDENT: I mean, I asked the — he — she is going to be my running mate — number one. And number two, I did put her in charge. I think she’s doing a good job.

Then Welker managed to ask her third and fourth top-tier clown-shit questions:

Let me ask you — big picture: Particularly when you think about voting rights and the struggles you’ve had to unify your own party around voting rights, unity was one of your key campaign promises. In fact, in your inaugural address, you said your “whole soul” was in “bringing America together, uniting our people…” People heard the speech that you gave on voting rights in Georgia recently in which you described those who are opposed to you to George Wallace and Jefferson Davis, and some people took exception to that.

What do you say to those who are offended by your speech? And is this country more unified than it was when you first took office?

Now, Welker isn’t the only journalist to pearl-clutch on behalf of offended opponents of voting rights, but she was the one who did it at the press conference right after two other terrible questions, and her second question was terrible by implication, the implication being that Biden is at fault for the disunity. It’s an ugly implication that she spelled out the first time she asked this question, to Psaki a few weeks ago.

And when Biden laid the blame where it belongs — with Republicans who are obstructing voting rights and supporting the insurrectionist former guy who has spent the year fomenting more insurrection — Welker was like “But, Mr. President is the country more unified than when you first took office?”

Things got worse after the press conference, as the mainstream media ran with two bad-faith narratives about things President Biden said.

The first was the notion that he gave a “green light” for a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine, and the false idea that Psaki had to “clean up” those remarks — by literally saying exactly what Biden said.

The President said “I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”

It was clear to some that the remark was intended to describe a less clear-cut situation that could lead to disagreement among NATO allies, but the “green-light” narrative became the big headline.

Except Biden was asked if that’s what he meant, and he explained in the same way that Psaki did:

Are you saying that a minor incursion by Russia into Ukrainian territory would not lead to the sanctions that you have threatened? Or are you effectively giving Putin permission to make a small incursion into the country?

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.) Good question. That’s how it did sound like, didn’t it?

The most important thing to do: Big nations can’t bluff, number one.

And number two, the idea that we would do anything to split NATO, which would be a — have a profound impact on one of — I think prominent impact — on one of Putin’s objectives is to weaken NATO — would be a big mistake.

So, the question is: If it’s a — something significantly short of a significant invasion — or not even significant, just major military forces coming across — for example, it’s one thing to determine that if they continue to use cyber efforts, well, we can respond the same way, with cyber.

They have FSB people in Ukraine now trying to undermine the solidarity within Ukraine about Russia and to try to promote Russian interest. But it’s very important that we keep everyone in NATO on the same page. And that’s what I’m spending a lot of time doing. And there are differences. There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do depending on what happens — the degree to which they’re able to go.

Biden also likely had former President Barack Obama’s “red line” on Syria in mind as well, as evidenced by the “Big nations can’t bluff” remark.

The other big media headline was the idea that Biden tried to delegitimize the 2022 election, and that was somehow equivalent to Trump’s insurrectionist Big Lie.

And some were still not satisfied when Psaki clarified that the president “was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it.”

Biden’s remarks were a bit sloppy — again, the man struggles with a stutter — but his remarks were entirely consistent with Psaki’s.

Still, that answer left me wishing Biden had gone further, as Psaki did a few days ago when she said “there’s a night-and-day difference between fomenting an insurrection based on lies totally debunked by 80 judges, including Trump-appointed ones, and election authorities across the country and making objective, true statements, which is what the President made yesterday, about the effects of a coordinated nationwide effort to undermine the constitutional right to vote.”

That’s a message that the pearl-clutchers need to hear, especially someone like Jake Tapper, who went so far as to admit that America disenfranchises minority voters and always has, but added if “any election like that is an illegitimate election, point to me to one American election that’s been legitimate.”

Overall, I’d give President Biden an A-minus because I do think there were some off moments, like his continued insistence that Republican obstructionism is somehow surprising. The length of the presser not only earned him some good press but likely some goodwill from the media.

The media, with a few exceptions, gets a C because while there was a lot of garbage, there were some very good questions asked by many of the reporters, and at least one cable news personality — CNN’s Kaitlan Collins — who got something right in the aftermath.

Watch above via MSNBC.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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