Joe Biden took a lot of heat for not holding an end-of-year press conference and instead jetting off on another fancy vacation, and it would now appear that the same pattern will continue in 2024.
Reports broke early Monday morning that a Biden interview had been scheduled with MSNBC… only Jill Biden was slated to do the interview.
When Biden skipped the traditional end-of-year press conference, the White House press corps was rightfully upset. Biden is trying to fight off an image that he is old and incapable of handling the grind, so it only fuels the fire when he skips out on these types of events. The White House tried to defend Biden for skipping the event, stating:
"Our ultimate goal is to reach the American people wherever and however they consume media, and that's not just through the briefing room or Washington-based news outlets."
They are literally admitting that Biden is circumventing the media, so he is not challenged on any of his statements.
Friday was the kickoff of Biden's re-election campaign, with Biden giving a fiery speech about how much of a threat Donald Trump is to our democracy, yet it is Democrats looking to have Trump removed from the ballot. That speech, however, may have done Biden more harm than good. The internet blew up with images of Jill Biden showing up at the last second to lead Joe Biden off the stage…
She's walking him off the stage like a child https://t.co/bFv2MMVCtS
— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) January 5, 2024
Then, on Monday morning, it was announced that Jill was the one setting up interviews, not Joe Biden, with her first interview going to MSNBC. The interview will be held with "Morning Joe's" Mika Brzezinski, and Jill Biden will discuss her "life, career, and the pivotal year ahead" for this administration.
DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall stated out loud what everyone is thinking right now:
"Voters can surely infer she is only doing the interviews because the president can't or won't."
Every interview that Joe Biden has given since taking office has been a softball interview, where he is never challenged and often allowed to tout statistics that have been completely debunked by fact-checkers, such as his claim of 14 million jobs created.
Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson believes that the Democrat Party will again hide Biden and hope that Trump makes a misstep along the way that will cost him the election. He stated:
"Joe Biden appears ready to run the same campaign in 2024 that he ran in 2020 - the so-called' basement strategy': Don't interact at all in uncontrolled situations, limit yourself to subservient media, and make the election about Donald Trump.
"Biden staying in the 'basement' keeps the media focus on Trump. Whatever downside there may be to the basement strategy, it's the best strategy Biden has."
Biden has refused to do a single interview with Fox News, but he has done one with Comedy Central and The Weather Channel. He has sat down with late-night TV hosts while granting only a handful of interviews to serious media outlets, and as I noted above, they are always softball questions. Just as I predicted last year, Jill Biden, not Joe Biden, will be the face of the re-election campaign.
