Why you haven’t seen a sit-down Biden interview yet – POLITICO

Joe Biden waited nearly four decades to become the most powerful man in the free world. Now that he is, he’s making himself scarce.

Biden is leaning on doctors and health experts to publicly detail his Covid policy. He’s relying on his Cabinet, economic advisers and other high-ranking administration officials to help sell his nearly $2 trillion rescue package. Biden’s press team, meanwhile, is standing in for their boss by blanketing TV programs with pledges to tell the truth even when it’s inconvenient. It’s one of the more arresting shifts after four years of a president who delighted in torturing the media with sudden pronouncements that often surprised and befuddled his own advisers.

“He trusts them, and Americans will trust experts,” John Anzalone, a top Biden adviser and campaign pollster, said of the president’s approach to his team. “Plus,” he added, “Biden is dealing with multiple crises and is a good delegator.”

White House aides describe the strategy not so much as delegation but as an concerted effort to restore confidence with a public battered by the contradictory messaging and scorched-earth politics of the Trump years. In just over a week, the White House has booked 80 TV and radio interviews with 20 senior administration officials, members of the Covid-19 response team and Cabinet secretary designates. They’ve had officials on each major network, booking them on every Sunday show in the first week. And they worked with CNN to have three of the doctors in charge of its Covid-19 response take questions from the public during a coronavirus town hall, said Mariel Sáez, the White House director of broadcast media.

Who’s not been booked for any sit-down interviews: Biden.

But the president hasn’t exactly been absent either. He appeared for brief ceremonies where he signed executive orders and delivered mostly scripted remarks. He’s taken a handful of questions from the news media. And he’s expected to give a major foreign policy address on Monday amid a planned trip to the State Department, his first visit to a Cabinet agency.

Source: Why you haven’t seen a sit-down Biden interview yet – POLITICO

One Reply to “Why you haven’t seen a sit-down Biden interview yet – POLITICO”

  1. In a July 20, 2017 story by The Free Thought Project’s Jay Syrmopoulos, renowned and respected intellectual and academic Noam Chomsky’s thoughts are clearly illustrated in regards to what he sees as the Trump administration’s continuous news-media propagated pseudo-scandal involving Russia; it’s one he believes basically acts as but a distraction from the actual moral and ethical scandals occurring daily in Washington, D.C., which only serves to bolster the “rich and powerful”.

    (Chomsky, who’s also an MIT linguistics professor, authored 100-plus books, including “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,” the latter in which he intrinsically analyzes how U.S. corporate news-media have been ‘weaponized’ as a means of manipulating public opinion by ‘propagandizing’ the American public.)

    Chomsky feels the news-media would much better serve the public interest if they actually focused on what’s occurring behind the scenes of the Trump presidency.

    “What’s going on is a very systematic two-tiered operation. One of them is Trump, Bannon, the effort to try to make sure you capture the headlines, that you’re top of the news, one crazy thing after another just to capture people’s attention … While everything is focusing on [Russia-gate], the Paul Ryan Republicans … are busy implementing programs that they have been talking quietly about for years. Very savage programs, which have very simple principles. One, be sure to offer to the rich and powerful gifts … and [two], kick everyone else in the face. And it’s going on step by step right behind the bluster.”

    Meanwhile, however, “the Democrats are cooperating … in a very striking way … Take a look at the focus in Çongress. It’s one of the few decent things Trump has been doing … Recent ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, had a blog where he pointed out that, ‘[Logically] it’s exactly what you should be doing. It’s the job of ambassadors and diplomats coming in. There are serious problems and tensions you want to talk over to see if there’s anything you can do about them. Instead of just building up force and violence.’ That’s what the Democrats are focusing on, and meanwhile all these other [insidious behind the scenes] things are going on and they’re not saying anything about them.”

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