Psaki Pressed at Briefing About Biden Not Holding a Solo Press Conference as President Yet

There’s been some media attention in the past few days to President Joe Biden not holding a solo press conference yet as president.

CNN White House reporter Kevin Liptak noted this week, “As we await word on when President Biden will hold his first solo press conference, an analysis of the past 100 years shows he is behind his 15 most recent predecessors, who all held a solo press conference within 33 days of taking office.”

So at Friday’s briefing, Psaki was asked by the AP’s Alexandra Jaffe about Biden not holding a solo press conference yet.

Psaki pointed to how Biden “takes questions several times a week” from reporters and said, “We look forward to holding a full press conference in the coming weeks, before the end of the month.”

She added, “This president came in during a historic crisis — two historic crises — a pandemic like the country had not seen in decades and decades, and an economic downturn that left 10 million people out of work. So I think the American people would certainly understand if his focus and his energy and his attention has been on ensuring we secure enough vaccines to vaccinate all Americans, which we will do by the end of May, and then pushing for a rescue plan that will provide direct checks to almost 160 million Americans.”

Jaffe noted the pool sprays “are not an idea forum for us to be asking questions.”

“He can’t hear us half the time, we get maybe two questions in and we’re shuffled out. So why hasn’t he answered questions from the press at this point? Is it just that he’s too busy?”

“I think he’s answered questions — I believe the count is almost 40 times,” Psaki said. “I would say that his focus again is on getting recovery and relief to the American people.”

You can watch above, via C-SPAN