2024-02-26T12:48:57+00:00
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/ The American website “The Hill” reported that President Joe Biden is deeply frustrated with the media, months before the “high-stakes” presidential elections that will be held next November.
The site said that Biden’s camp is swinging in press coverage of the Oval Office occupant who is seeking re-election amid ongoing concerns about whether the 81-year-old is “fit” for another four years.
The website pointed out that Biden’s supporters believe that the media and its reporters are now focusing on the president’s repeated verbal slips and asking questions about the president’s age, while his potential opponent in November, Donald Trump, faces dozens of criminal charges amid his talk of undermining international alliances, launching a campaign against immigrants, and the possibility of allowing abortion during his presidential campaign.
The president’s personal lawyer wrote this week in an op-ed in the New York Times, criticizing press coverage of the special counsel’s report on Biden’s subpoena.
The White House is “very disturbed” by reports about Biden’s age, he said in a recent television interview.
The website quoted John Reinisch, a Democratic strategist, as saying: “The more momentum this campaign gains against Biden and the more aggressive the White House takes off the gloves and becomes, the better off they will be.”
Reinisch said Biden’s campaign “wasn’t as sharp, persuasive or aggressive as it could have been.”
He noted that in the face of concerns about whether Biden could serve another term, more direct pushback from the president’s camp against media coverage and criticism of Biden could help build a sense of Biden’s strength.
He added that he hoped it was “not too late” to take counter-action.
Special Counsel Robert Hur issued a lengthy report earlier this month concluding that Biden would not face any charges over his handling of classified documents since he was vice president and a senator.
The report also highlighted the differences between Biden’s case and Trump’s, who faces charges in Florida for keeping classified material and refusing to return it when he left the White House in 2021.
However, what angered the White House, according to the site, is that a large amount of media coverage was devoted to video clips questioning Biden’s ability to remember when his son died or when he served as vice president.
Several media outlets also directly reported Hur’s executive summary, which said Biden “intentionally withheld” classified documents — a point the White House disagreed with, as Hur also determined there was insufficient evidence to bring any charges against the president.
The website added that Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, had written to the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association – which has no control over media coverage – criticizing the reports of the special counsel’s findings.
“When significant errors in reporting occur, such as misrepresenting the findings and conclusions of a federal investigation into a sitting president, it is critical that they be addressed,” Sams wrote in a Feb. 13 letter.
In contrast, Kelly O’Donnell, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and a correspondent for the American network “NBC News” described Sams’ letter as “misdirected” and described the use of internal channels to spread the letter as “inappropriate.”
In a statement released on February 12, TJ Ducklo, a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, criticized the media for “unwarranted and sensationalist attacks on the president’s age” after Trump suggested he would allow Russia to invade NATO allies that had not contributed enough to the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Biden campaign also sent out a press release criticizing the New York Times for “dodging” Biden’s remarks on the economy, and many Democrats rolled their eyes at a Times headline about Biden’s efforts to forgive student loan debt, which described the president as “besieged” only to be changed hours later.
Biden has appeared before the press less frequently than his predecessor Trump, according to research conducted by the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, The Hill reported.
He continued: “Biden holds an average of 11 press conferences per year, while Trump holds an average of 22 press conferences. Before him, President Obama held an average of 20 press conferences per year.”
He stressed that the Biden administration has worked to build a good relationship with journalists, in stark contrast to the Trump administration, which was characterized by confrontation and attacks on the media, especially “fake news,” as Belt said — and the president’s camp is likely to have shied away from harsh criticism of the White House’s coverage.
The site indicated that President Biden and his allies may now see that the risks are too great to back down, as Trump is on track to win the Republican nomination and set up the 2024 race for a “rematch” between Trump and Biden.
“No president likes to be criticized by journalists or reported on or written negatively about,” Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of public communication at American University, was quoted as saying in the report.
Steinhorn noted that Trump and his camp were trying to portray Biden as old in 2020 but Trump, who is 77 and only a few years younger than his rival, is now Biden’s own age during the last cycle.
Trump has faced scrutiny for some of his recent gaffes, including when he confused former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with his Republican primary rival Nikki Haley.